The Broken Image of New Netherland

A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL STORY OF A DUTCH COLONY

Max Boersma s1016415 Nonnensteeg 1-3 2311VJ Leiden [email protected]

Master Thesis Professor: Dr. E.F. van der Bilt 11-8-2015

Content

Introduction ...... 2

Chapter 1: the 17th and 19th centuries ...... 4

Chapter 2: end 19th century/beginning 20th century ...... 21

Chapter 3: 21st century ...... 35

Conclusion ...... 74

Bibliography ...... 76

1 Introduction

Nowadays, the settlement of New Amsterdam, though hardly the most successful seventeenth-century colony of the Dutch republic, is one of the most important cities in the world.

New Amsterdam was the capital of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Today, it is not known by the name the Dutch gave it, but by the name the English gave it: New York. But even though more has changed than just the name, some things remain the same. As Washington Irving wrote in his apology of his book A History of New York: “It [the Dutch rule over New Netherland] was . . . almost a terra incognita in history. In fact, I was surprised to find how few of my fellow-citizens were aware that New

York had ever been called New Amsterdam, or had heard of the names of its early Dutch governors, or cared a straw about their ancient Dutch progenitors.”1 He wrote these words in the beginning of the

19th century. In the 21st century nothing seems to have changed, since Charles Gehring said the following in an interview in the New York Times about his work at the New Netherland Institute to translate old Dutch documents of New Netherland into English: “Most historians don’t think much of the Dutch; they minimalize the Dutch influence and try to get out of that period as quickly as possible to get into English stuff.”2

Throughout the years, New Netherland and New Amsterdam have nevertheless been described many times, in many ages and by many writers. From A Description of the New Netherlands by Adriaen van der Donck, A History of New York by Washington Irving (by the pseudonym of Diedrich

Knickerbocker) to the book The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto, many writers had their own image of the Dutch colony. The descriptions vary, but how do they do so? What are the elements that had an impact on these descriptions? And are there no common denominators that bring these descriptions together? What was the influence of the time at the writers? Who are the heroes of New Netherland? How do they portray the political leaders? The questions underlying this

1 Michael L. Black and Nancy B. Black ed., Washington Irving, A History of New York (Boston 1984) 3 2 Danny Hakim, ‘His Specialty? Making Old New York Talk in Dutch’ in: New York Times New York Region (December 27th 2009) A18 2 thesis are how various authors depicted New Netherland over the years and what helps explain some of the changes that occurred in their writings.

By examining multiple works (the books by Washington Irving and Adriaen van der Donck, although respectively a satire story and a “public relations” description, cannot be ignored given the huge impact of the books) from different time periods, one can grasp how New Netherland and New

Amsterdam were seen through history and how the descriptions of the settlement and colony changed. Because it is impossible to discuss every book and every article that discusses New

Netherland and New Amsterdam, the books and articles that are analyzed here are only a small portion of the available sources. However, the sources that are discussed here are the most important ones that show the development of the literature on New Amsterdam and New Netherland from the founding of the colony until today. A discussion of the authors and the content of these works will indicate the changes that occur in the writings on the seventeenth-century Dutch colony and explain what underlies these changes. As will become clear in this historiographical study, although academic developments will figure prominently in these changes, political considerations play an important role as well.

3 Chapter 1: the 17th and 19th centuries

Before 1850, two important books about New Netherland were written: Beschryvinge van

Nieuw-Nederlant by Adriaen van der Donck and A History of New York by Washington Irving (written under the pseudonym of Diedrich Knickerbocker). One being a description of a contemporary settler, the other a satire story by an American writer, the books were completely different. The influence of both was different as well. Irving’s book immediately had a huge influence on the image of New

Netherland, while the book of Van der Donck did not have much influence until much later. The books were not written by professional (or even gentlemen amateur) historians. Van der Donck’s account was more an advertisement trying to draw settlers to the Dutch colony in North America while Irving’s work was more entertainment than “real” history.

Adriaen van der Donck was, according to the New Netherland Institute, a very important figure in the history of New Netherland. As the institute’s website says: “Adriaen van der Donck, born during the 1618-1620 period, is one of several interesting and important figures in the development of New

Netherland. He put his stamp first in the Rensselaersyck colony, but later also on New Amsterdam during the periods of the governor generals Kieft and Stuyvesant.”3 In 1655, Van der Donck published his work Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant. It was not very popular in its time, although (as scholars indicate) highly appreciated by Washington Irving (even though he did not mention Van der Donck in his book). The main reason for the lack of interest was that it took almost 200 years before the first translation in English was published: in 1841 the English version was published by Jeremiah Johnson as A Description of the New Netherlands. It took until 1968 before the second translation by Thomas

F. O’Donnell came out. Before the English translation was published, scholars used and praised the book by Van der Donck, but the general public hardly knew of its existence.4 As O’Donnell writes in his introduction for his translation from 1968: ”Van der Donck and his language were losers. Had he

3 New Netherland Institute, Adriaen van der Donck (1620-1655) on: http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/dutch_americans/adriaen-van-der-donck/ (seen 16-4-2015) 4 Adriaen van der Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands, translated by Thomas O’Donnell (Syracuse 1968) ix-x 4

written in English rather than Dutch, his Description would certainly have won from posterity the same kind, if not the same amount, of veneration that has been bestowed on Bradford’s Of Plymouth

Plantation.”5 Russell Shorto says something similar in his book, The Island at the Center of the World,

The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. “Why American history has overlooked their [the Dutch] accomplishment has to do in part with Anglo centrism and also probably with something as mundane as the way colonial studies have traditionally been divided in America universities: English departments focusing on the English colonies, the Spanish colonies covered in the Spanish department, and so on. This meant both that the Dutch colony was relegated to the margins (few American universities have Dutch departments) and that colonial studies as a whole were approached narrowly.”6 Van der Donck’s book is used my many New Netherland historians as a source. For instance, in his book The Colony of New Netherland, A Dutch Settlement in

Seventeenth-Century America Jaap Jacobs relies on it for information, as does Russell Shorto in his book.7 Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer wrote in 1909 about Van der Donck’s book: “This, indeed, is an exceptionally intelligent book of its kind.”8

O’Donnell describes Van der Donck’s book in these words: “Whatever else it is, A Description of the New Netherlands is the first book written by an established resident of what is now New York state, and it is the first book about the state itself – the first careful and detailed study of the land that stretches north and northwest form Staten Island to Canada, the St. Lawrence River, and Lake

Ontario.”9 Seeing Van der Donck as an American, since he was planning to stay permanently in the

New World, O’Donnell considers the book of Van der Donck as an early Dutch version of the American

5 Van der Donck, A Description x 6 Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (New York 2004) 220-221 7 Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca 2009) and Shorto, The Island 8 Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century Vol 1. New Amsterdam (New York 1909) 481 5 9 Van der Donck, A Description xi

Dream. It is in this sense that it is not only important and interesting to New Yorkers, but also for all

Americans.10

Van der Donck’s career started in his early twenties as a schout (as Russell Shorto describes it:

“a Dutch title that combined the duties of sheriff and public prosecutor”11) of the local patroonship, a kind of plantation, called Rensselaerswyck. This was owned by a tradesman from Amsterdam whose name was Kiliaen van Rensselaer (there is still a village called Rensselaer at the same place, next to

Albany, New York). As a graduate of Leiden University, where he studied both civil and canon law, and a member of a respected family in Breda and its surroundings, Van der Donck drew the attention of

Van Rensselaer. Van Rensselaer sent him to the New World to work for him.12

Since Van der Donck was the only educated man in New Netherlands at the time and there were few books in Rensselaerswyck, next to his administrative duties Van der Donck focused on his intellectual and cultural interests. He became interested in the Indians and the natural environment of the patroonship. His intellectual pursuits caused a Van der Donck to focus less on his job, involving most of the time “protecting the patroon’s financial interests, which meant that he was to clamp down on slackers and smugglers and colonists behind on their rent.”13 The result was his Beschryvinge van

Nieuw-Nederlant. After some quarrels with Van Rensselaer, Van der Donck resigned as schout, but he decided to stay in Rensselaerswyck for a while. He married a local English woman and he helped Willem

Kieft, the director-general of New Netherland, to establish peace with the Indians. For helping Kieft, he gained permission to buy land from the Indians, a piece of land nowadays called Yonkers.14 This is named after Van der Donck’s nickname, jonkheer, esquire in Dutch.15 Not much later, Peter Stuyvesant succeeded Kieft as director-general of New Netherland. In December 1648 Stuyvesant named Van der

Donck as a member of the Board of Nine Men. (This board will be discussed later in more detail.) The

10 Van der Donck, A Description xii 11 Shorto, The Island 103 12 Van der Donck, A Description xii-xv 13 Firth Haring Fabend, New Netherland in a Nutshell A concise history of the Dutch Colony in North America (Albany 2012) 53 14 Van der Donck, A Description xviii-xxvii 6 15 New Netherland Institute, Adriaen van der Donck

board consisted of the most respected men in the settlements who were to represent the people of the colony. Stuyvesant soon regretted the appointment of Van der Donck, who became the leader of the Board. Before long the Board complained about the decline of the colony and asked Stuyvesant to produce a detailed plan with steps to improve trade and attract new immigrants. When Stuyvesant refused, the Board appointed Van der Donck to write down all the complaints against Stuyvesant.

Stuyvesant was so furious that he arrested Van der Donck the next day and removed him from the

Board. This did not work, since even as a non-official member of the Board of Nine Van der Donck got permission to file a complaint in the name of the Board to the Staten Generaal, the parliament of the

Dutch Republic.16

In the summer of 1649, Van der Donck wrote his complaint called The Remonstrance (Vertoogh van Nieuw Nederlandt, weghens de Ghelegenheydt, Vruchtbaerheydt, en soberen Staet desselfs. In s’Graven Hage, 1650)17, which not only accused Stuyvesant and the Dutch West India Company (which was in charge of the colony) of mismanagement, but also expressed his plans for a better future of

New Netherland. In April 1650 the protesters finally received a reaction from the Staten Generaal

(Dutch parliament), which contained a provisional order. While Van der Donck decided to stay in the

Dutch Republic (to which he had returned to lodge the complaint), Stuyvesant ignored the order in

New Netherland. After the first Anglo-Dutch War, the Staten Generaal forbade Van der Donck to sail back to New Netherlands. During his forced stay in the Republic, Van der Donck wrote his Description based on the memories of his own experiences (he had no access to New Netherland documents). In

1653, before his book was published he was allowed to go back to New Netherland. However, he was not allowed to practice law before the court. Two years later, in the same year that his book came out, he died at the age of 35.18 According to the New Netherland Institute, he likely died after an Indian attack.19 As his life story indicate Van der Donck was very influential in the political history of New

16 Van der Donck, A Description xxviii-xxxi 17 Ibidem, iii 18 Ibidem, xxxi-xxxix 19 New Netherland Institute, Adriaen van der Donck 7

Netherland; however, in his book Van der Donck would not mention political issues as for instance the

Nine Men or his petition to the Staten Generaal. Van der Donck focused more on selling the colony and focusing on positive elements of the colony.

Van der Donck was very positive about the Dutch colony in his book. As the dedication of the book by Evert Nieuwenhof to the city of Amsterdam states: “...yet that part of North America called

New Netherlands (of which this book treats) possesses so great an intrinsic value, that it deserves to be held in high estimation, as well as on account of the extensive trade with it, which is constantly on the increase.”20 In the dedication to the Dutch West India Company (WIC) the text continues: “My

Lords, as soon as this History came to hand, I deemed it necessary and proper to print and publish the same, thereby to make known the beauties and advantage of the flourishing Colony of New

Netherlands, which, under your wise and careful direction, is advancing in prosperity, all of which should be publicly know, particularly in Amsterdam. […] to the end that they may be invited by the pure air and fruitfulness of the New Netherlands to go thither, where if they be not fastidious, lazy plodders) they may, with industry and economy, acquire property and gain wealth, and enjoy the fruits of the earth and of their industry, in as healthy a climate as can be found on the surface of the globe.”21

This very positive dedication about New Netherland is in line with the positive tone of the book. Clearly, with his book Van der Donck tries to ‘sell’ New Netherland to a general audience in the Republic and to the Staten Generaal. That Van der Donck was very positive about New Netherland is not that surprising. One year after his book was published, Van der Donck together with Jacob Wolphertsz van

Couwenhoven and Jan Evertsz Bout (with the financial help of the directors of the WIC) set up a ship to bring two hundred passengers (half of whom were farmers) to New Netherland.22 His account was related to efforts to stimulate migration to the colony. If Van der Donck were to address the political problems or his struggles with Stuyvesant, it would only harm his goal.

20 Van der Donck, A Description vii 21 Ibidem, viii 22 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 50 8

Van der Donck is effusive in his praise of the settlements. He continues in the first chapter:

“New Netherlands is a fine, acceptable, healthy, extensive and agreeable country, wherein all people can more easily gain a competent support, than in the Netherlands, or in any other quarter of the globe, which is known to me or which I have visited.”23 He makes clear that he would regret losing the area to European competitors. In one of his depictions of the river and its neighboring land he writes in relation to the Swedes who had occupied land nearby: “Equaling in many respects the celebrated river of the Amazons, although not in greatness, yet in advantages with which this river and the neighboring land is favoured, we would regret to lose such a jewel by the devices and hands of a few strangers [Swedes].”24

A Description of the New Netherlands is a very detailed book about how New Netherland looked like. Van der Donck describes everything from the fruits that grow there (and brought there by the settlers) to the rivers and lakes, the agriculture (which could have two crops a year). Furthermore, he describes the minerals in the ground (“In the year 1645, a mine was discovered on the Raritan, by accident or chance, which is held to be richer and better than any other before known”25) and the animals of the colony (“The cattle in New Netherlands are mostly of the Holland breed, but usually do not grow as large, because the hay is not so good, and because the heifers are permitted to play in the second year for the purpose of increasing the stock”26). In several respects, the book resembles

Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, published more than a century later: like Jefferson’s work on Virginia, van der Donck’s book on New Netherland offers readers an almost “scientific” depiction of the author’s new world environment.27

The book shares with Jefferson’s Notes its (pseudo)-anthropological, (pseudo)-Enlightenment descriptions of the native population. About the Indians or wilden (savages) as he calls them, he writes:

“Having briefly remarked on the situation and advantages of the country, we deem it worth our

23 Van der Donck, A Description 2 24 Ibidem, 10 25 Ibidem, 35 26 Ibidem, 40 27 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) 9

attention to treat concerning the nature of the original native inhabitants of the land; that after the

Christians have multiplied and the natives have disappeared and melted away, a memorial of them may be preserved.”28 This quote is quite strange since there was still a huge trade with the Indians in

Beverwyck in the 1660.29 Van der Donck writes more about the Indians in his book. For instance, about the different tribes the settlers had to deal with, he wrote: “The nations, tribes, and languages are as different in America as they are in Europe.”30 About the religion of the wilden, he said: “They [the

Indians] love to hear us [the colonist] speak of God and of our religion, and are very attentive and still during divine service and prayers, and apparently are inclined to devotion; but in truth they know nothing about it, and live without any religion, or without any inward or outward godly fear, nor do they know of any superstition or idolatry; they only follow the instilled laws of nature, therefore some suppose they can easily be brought to the knowledge and fear of God.”31 This view on the Indians of

Van der Donck can be explained by the fact that the book was supposed to make the colony and its native inhabitants attractive for future colonists. Lastly, Van der Dock talks about the colony’s animals, particularly the beavers, which were the most important trade in the colony. “From the beaver fur, or wool, the best hats are made that are worn, which are named beavers or castoreums, after the materials form which the same are made, being at present known over all Europe.”32

In his book, he uses many estimations (about for instance the Great Falls of the Maquas kill/Mohawk river, which he described as between one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet high, but the falls are in reality only seventy feet high)33 and information and stories he got from the native inhabitants (for instance how the Indians used to cross the river).34 Van der Donck also describes in his book a few traditions of the Indians such as the tradition of “bush-burning”.35 The colonists who came

28 Van der Donck, A Description, 71-72 29 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 117 30 Van der Donck, A Description 91 31 Ibidem, 102 32 Ibidem, 113 33 Van der Donck, A Description 12 34 Ibidem, 12 10 35 Ibidem, 20-21

to New Netherlands had more than simply trade contacts with the Indians. As Van der Donck writes:

“Several of our Netherlanders were connected with them before our women came over, and remain firm in their attachments.”36 (This contradicts what Jaap Jacobs will write in his book: “From the perspective of the colonists, Indians were not members of the community.”37)

However, in general Van der Donck is not very positive about the nature of the Indians. As he writes in his book: “They do not possess great wisdom or extensive knowledge, but reasonable understanding, resulting from practical experience, which they certainly possess without any desire for further instruction; they are naturally civil and well disposed, and quick enough to distinguish between good and evil, but after they have associated amongst us, they become cunning and deceitful.

They are slovenly, careless and dirty of their persons, and are troubled with the evils which attend filthiness. They are very revengeful and obstinate even unto death, and when in trouble they disregard and despise all pain and torture that can be done to them, and will sing with proud contempt until death terminates their sufferings. They are all stingy and inclined to beggary, and cannot be trusted too far because they also are thievish; denying them the least trifle does not offend them.”38 However, later in his book, when he writes about punishments and crimes, he states: “With us a watchful police is supported, and crimes are more frequent than among them.”39 This is another example of Van der

Donck trying to sell the colony to the Republic and portraying the Indians in a positive way helped that.

Van der Donck did not use many stereotypes to depict the colonists in his book. There are multiple reasons for this. Firstly, as a contemporary and a local, he knew what was going on in the colony. Most of the stereotypes were developed when the English took over and by Washington

Irving’s work. Secondly, his goal of attracting as many new settlers to the colony as was possible would not be helped by negative stereotypes. However, as the previous quote shows, he did use stereotypes of the Indians and their habits.

36 Ibidem, 73 37 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 206 38 Van der Donck, A Description 94 39 Ibidem, 101 11

Van der Donck did not write about the political situation in his A Description of the New

Netherlands. On the one hand, this is odd since he was very active in politics, first in Rensselaerswyck and later in New Amsterdam and since both Russell Shorto and Jaap Jacobs attribute quite some political influence to him. As J.M. Bloch wrote in his review of the English translation of his work: “Van der Donck himself emerges as tragic hero, champion of popular rights against the two most powerful men in the colony: the old Patroon himself [Killiaen van Renssealaer] and that equally proud, headstrong, and tyrannical Hollander, Peter Stuyvesant.”40 But on the other hand, his Description, as the title already suggests, was not a political book. The major goal of the book was to promote settlement in New Netherland: describing the political situation would not benefit that goal. The book simply aimed to draw settlers to New Netherland: it was a public-relations work, an advertisement for the new colony. As such, it could not become political.

He tried to make the colony as attractive as possible for the new colonists. This is not very odd, since it was very hard to find settlers to go to New Netherland. The Dutch Republic was in it is Golden

Age and the possibilities to gain wealth in the motherland were huge. Van der Donck tried to promote

New Netherland to convince potential settlers to search for a better life in the New World. To compete with the Dutch Republic, he needed a positive story.

Approximately 150 years later, in 1809, Washington Irving published his A History of New York under the pseudonym of Diedrich Knickerbocker. The book was a huge success, as Michael L. Black and

Nancy B. Black wrote in their editorial introduction to a reprinting of Irving’s book in 1984: “The appearance of Knickerbocker’s History in 1809 made Irving an instant cause célèbre. ’It took,‘ Irving wrote, ‘with the public & gave me celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable & uncommon in America. I was noticed caressed & for a time elated by the popularity I gained.’”41 As

Jeffrey Scraba notes in modern-day New York Knickerbocker became a central figure: “The

40 J.M. Bloch, ‘O’Donnell, ed. “A Description of the New Netherlands”(Book Review)’, New York History, 52.3 (July 1, 1969) 328 41 Michael L. Black and Nancy B. Black ed., Washington Irving, A History of New York (Boston 1984) xxxii 12

Knickerbocker Bar and Grill in the Village. The Knickerbocker Club on the Upper East Side.

Knickerbocker Cleaners in Midtown. The Knickerbocker Blog sponsored by the Business Council of New

York State. The Knickerbocker Yacht Club in Port Washington. The Knicks. Two hundred years after his first appearance, Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictional narrator historian of Washington Irving’s first major work […] is still a familiar figure in the city.”42

However, it was a satirical history, perhaps not even a history (even though Irving did some research, something that has to be in the back of the reader’s mind when the book is taken into account). He is a good example of an amateur historian. As Michael and Nancy Black wrote: “Irving took some credit for this historical effort, acknowledging that even though Diedrich Knickerbocker’s book ‘has taken an unwarrantable liberty with our early provincial history, it has at least turned attention to that history and provoked research’”.43 Jerome McGann wrote in an article about

Washington Irving and his book that Irving was fascinated with “folklore and legend”.44 He argues: “The work is thus a staged event from the start, a literary performance played before the public by the unnamed author Washington Irving.”45 Also, McGann sees clear “back-to-the-future signs”.46 Readers realize that Knickerbocker already knew what was going to happen in the future, since he wrote his book one and a half century after the Dutch colony was taken over by the British.

As a historical narrative, the book creates an odd effect. Aiming to raise awareness about New

York’s Dutch history, it also creates a rather stereotypical history. With his book, Irving established a stereotype about Dutch colonists that portrayed them as “the fat, stupid, sleepy Dutchman”47. Mariana

Schuyler van Rensselaer refers to this aspect when she summarizes Irving’s book in her History of the

City of New York: “Washington Irving’s farcical Knickerbocker History, a book that has done sorry work

42 Jeffrey Scraba, ‘Quixotic History and Cultural Memory: Knickerbocker’s History of New York’ in: Early American Studies: A Interdisciplinary Journal (vol 7, no 2, 2009) 389-390 43 Irving, A History of New York xlix 44 Jerome McGann, ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ in: Early American Literature (vol 47, no 2, 2012) 349 45 McGann, ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ 350 46 Ibidem, 356 13 47 Irving, A History of New York li

in distorting the story of New Amsterdam. Its comic-opera background with groups of foolish, plethoric burghers dozing, boozing and smoking in comfortable chimney-corners bears, of course, no remotest likeness to the real New Amsterdam of 1633 – to the poor, stinted, struggling little frontier post where, only five years before, even the clergyman suffered hardship”.48 In later versions of his book, Irving changed some of the stereotypes of the Dutch. As Michael and Nancy Black wrote: “At several points,

Irving removes unkind references to the Dutch, especially an ironic paragraph about ‘the only legitimate nobility and real lords of the soil’”.49 McGann comes up with an answer why he created these changes. He writes: “The changes were not driven so much by new positive facts that had to be accounted for, though he did introduce important neglected material. Nor did they come by multiplying the History’s narrative points of view. These were already sufficiently complex. Irving changed his book by clarifying the historical ground of his procedural indeterminacies.”50

Even after the changes, Irving still uses in his book many stories to confirm the Dutch stereotypes. For instance, when Irving is talking about the origins of the town Haerlem, he says that it sprung form a tavern, which is confirming the stereotype that the bars and taverns were the most important buildings in the colony. Irving is also not very positive about Dutch rule in the opening stages of settlements. As he writes: “As most of the council were but little skilled in the mystery of combining pot-hooks and hangers, they determined most judiciously not to puzzle either themselves or posterity with voluminous records. The secretary however, kept the minutes of the council with tolerable precision, in a large vellum folio, fasted with massy brass clasps; the journal of each meeting consisted but of two lines, stating in Dutch, that ‘the council sat this day, and smoked twelve pipes, on the affairs of the colony.’”51 Secondly, when Irving writes about the plan of Willem Kieft to raise the taxes on tobacco, he says: “The pipe, in fact, was the great organ of reflection and deliberation of the New

Netherlander. It was his constant companion and solace. Was he gay, he smoked; was he sad, he

48 Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century Vol 1. New Amsterdam (New York 1909) 120 49 Irving, A History of New York lv 50 McGann, ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ 350 51 Ibidem, 84 14

smoked; his pipe was never out of his mouth; it was a part of this physiognomy; without it his best friends would not know him. Take away his pipe? You might as well take away his nose!”52 He also confirmed stereotypes about Dutch religion: “Nor must I omit to record on of the earliest measures of this infant settlement, inasmuch as it shows the piety of our forefathers, and that, like good Christians, they were always ready to serve God, after they had first served themselves.”53 He also relies on stereotypes to discuss food and the size of the Dutch. For example when he is talking about the Dutch soldiers preparing for battle against the Swedes, he states: “’Now had the Dutchmen snatched a huge repast and finding themselves wonderfully encouraged and animated thereby, prepared to take the field. […] The world forgot to turn round, or rather stood still, that it might witness the affray; like a round-bellied alderman, watching the combat of two chivalrous flies upon his jerkin.”54

Religion was a huge part of Washington Irving’s world and consequently had its influence on the story that Irving is telling. An example of this was a description of how the world was created:

“Who can seriously believe, that Noah and his immediate descendants knew less than we do, and that the builder and pilot of the greatest ship that ever was, a ship which was formed to traverse an unbounded ocean, and had so many shoals and quicksands to guard against, should be ignorant of, or should not have communicated to his descendants the art of sailing on the ocean? ‘Therefore, they did sail on the ocean, therefore they sailed to America – therefore, America was discovered by

Noah!’”55

Occasionally, Irving behaves like a political historian. About Wouter van Twiller (Walter the

Doubter), one of the first governors of New Netherland, Irving had mixed feelings. On the one hand, he wrote that some of Twiller’s actions “gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily imposed upon. [...] The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed, and proportioned, as through it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty

52 McGann, ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ 150 53 Ibidem, 87 54 Irving, A History of New York 233 55 Ibidem, 33-34 15

and lordly grandeur.”56 On the other hand in the same chapter he writes: “I have been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was not only the first, but also the best governor that ever presided over this ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil and benevolent was his reign, that I did not find through the whole of it, a single instance of any offender being brought to punishment – a most indubitable sign of a merciful governor, and a case unparalleled, excepting in the reign of the illustrious King Log, from whom, it is hinted, the renowned Van Twiller was a lineal descendant.”57 Irving had less mixed feelings about the aldermen: “In return for these humble services, they were permitted to say yes and no at the council- board, and to have that enviable privilege, the run of the public kitchen – being graciously permitted to eat, and drink, and smoke, at all those snug junketing and public gormandizing, for which the ancient magistrates were equally famous with their modern successors. The post of schepen, therefore, like that of assistant alderman, was eagerly coveted by all your burghers of a certain description, who have a huge relish for good feeding, and a humble ambition to be great man in a small way.”58 Also, about the burgomasters Irving was not very positive: “The burgomasters, like our aldermen, were generally chosen by weight - and not only the weight of the body, but likewise the weight of the head.”59 About the reign of Willem Kieft (William the Testy), the successor of Wouter van Twiller, Washington Irving is not positive: “The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community advances towards state of war; which is apt to be like the approach of a horse to a drum, which much prancing and little progress, and too often with the wrong end foremost.”60

Some historians see in these sarcastic and ironic depictions parallels between the world Irving is describing and the world Irving is living in. Irving may have used New Netherland political administrators to depict American politicians. One example is the parallel that Stanly T. Williams sees

56 Ibidem, 92 57 Irving, A History of New York 94 58 Ibidem, 97 59 Ibidem, 97 60 Ibidem, 130 16

in his book about the life of Washington Irving between Willem Kieft and Thomas Jefferson.61 As

McGann further explains: “The plot of A History makes Testy’s [Willem Kieft] ineffectual administration a dire historical portent for the Dutch colony. Jefferson is satirized through Kieft as an incompetent leader, both men posing dangers to their respective communities.”62 Jeffrey Scraba, too, sees Irving’s books as a reflection of Jefferson’s administration.63

On the other hand, the last of the Dutch governors of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, is treated very positively by Washington Irving.

To say merely that he was a hero would be doing him great injustice – he was in truth a combination of

heroes – for he was of a sturdy, rawboned make like Ajax Telamon, with a pair of round shoulders that

Hercules would have given his hide for (meaning his lion’s hide), when he undertook to ease old Atlas

of his load. He was moreover, as Phutarch describes Coriolanus, not only terrible for the force of his

arm, but likewise of his voice, which sounded as though it came out of a barrel; and, like the self-same

warrior, he possessed a sovereign contempt for the sovereign people, and an iron aspect, which was

enough of itself to make the very bowels of his adversaries quake with terror and dismay. All this martial

excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an accidental advantage, with which I am

surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a

wooden leg, which was the only prize he had gained in bravery fighting the battles of his country, but of

which he was so proud, that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put

together, in deed so highly did he esteem it, that he had it gallantly enchased and relieved with silver

devices, which caused it to be related in divers histories and legends that he wore a silver leg.64

Later in his book, he continued his praise of Stuyvesant: “He was, in truth, a hero of chivalry struck off by nature at a single heat, and though little care may have been take to refine her workmanship, he stood forth a miracle of her skill. In all his dealings he was headstrong perhaps, but open and above board; if there was anything in the whole world he most loathed and despised it was

61 Stanley T. Williams, The Life of Washington Irving Vol 1 (New York 1935) 117 62 McGann, ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ 354 63 Scraba, ‘Quixotic History and Cultural Memory’ 390 64 Irving, A History of New York 166-167 17

cunning and secret wile; ‘straight forward’ was his motto, and he would at any time rather run his hard head against a stone wall than attempt to get round it.”65

However, when Stuyvesant was away, for example to confront the Swedes by the Delaware

River, Irving was less positive about the population of New Amsterdam. “The unexampled liberality of

Peter Stuyvesant towards the Swedes, occasioned great surprise in the city of New Amsterdam – nay, certain factious individuals, who had been enlightened by political meeting sin the days of William the

Testy, but who had not dared to indulge their meddlesome habits under the eye of their present ruler, now, emboldened by his absence gave vent to their censures in the street.”66 When the popularity of

Stuyvesant among the population of New Amsterdam declined, Irving describes it in the following way:

“But though this measure produced the desired effect in putting in extinguisher on the new lights just brightening up: yet did it tend to injure the popularity of the Great Peter with the thinking part of the community: that is to say, that part which think for others instead of for themselves, or, in other words, who attend to every body’s business but their own.”67 Another example of the negative way

Washington Irving talks about the inhabitants of New Netherland is the way Irving describes Dirk

Schuiler, a Dutch soldier in New Netherlands: “Certain it is, he acknowledge allegiance to no one – was an utter enemy to work, holding it no manner of estimation – but lounged about the fort, depending upon chance for a subsistence, getting drunk whenever he could get liquor and stealing whatever he could lay his hands on.”68

However, Washington Irving sometimes praises the inhabitants and the city of New

Amsterdam as well. As he writes: “Under the instruction of these political oracles [city councils] the good people of New Amsterdam soon became exceedingly enlighted.”69 And about Willem Kieft he writes: “Thus end the authenticated chronicles of the reign of William the Testy; for henceforth, in the troubles, perplexities and confusion of the times, he seems to have been totally overlooked, and to

65 Ibidem, 183 66 Irving, A History of New York 227 67 Ibidem, 248 68 Ibidem, 208 69 Ibidem, 148 18

have slipped for ever through the fingers of scrupulous history. It is a matter of deep concern that such obscurity should hang over his latter days, for he was in truth a mighty and great little man, and worthy of being utterly renowned, seeing that he was the first potentate that introduced into this land the art of fighting by proclamation, and defending a country by trumpeters and wind-mills.”70 Strangely enough, as McGann points out in his article about Washington Irving’s’ book, Irving leaves out Kieft’s

War, which McGann calls “the single most important event in the history of New Netherlands”.71

When Irving discusses the English attack of New Amsterdam, he clearly chooses the side of

Peter Stuyvesant, as is indicated by what he say about the burghers: “[they] knew there was no use in saying a word – so lighted their pipes, and smoked away in silence, like fat and discreet councilors.”72

Later on when discussing the surrender of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam when they accepted the very generous offer of the English, Irving states: “the English succeed in alienating the confidence and affections of the populace from their gallant old governor [...] behind his back”73. For Irving, Stuyvesant was a kind of Federalist role-model.

In his conclusion, Irving wrote that the reign of Walter the Doubter in times of peace made the colony weak. “These [his policies] tend to unnerve a nation; to destroy its pride of character; to render it patient of insult; deaf to the calls of honor and of justice; and cause it to cling to peace, like the sluggard to his pillow, at the expense of every valuable duty and consideration. Such spineless ensure the very evil from which it shrinks.”74 This is another example of an attack of Irving on the policy of

Walter the Doubter (which was, as written before, actually an attack to Jefferson’s administration).

Until 1850, the people who were writing about New Netherland were not really historians.

These writers had most of the time a different agenda than later (amateur or professional) historians who would write about New Netherland. While Adriaen van der Donck had an economic agenda with his book, Washington Irving wanted to entertain. Irving’s “history” was a parody and a farce, aimed to

70 Irving, A History of New York 162 71 McGann, ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ 358 72 Irving, A History of New York 276 73 Ibidem, 283 74 Ibidem, 291 19

deflate history. Instead of accurately retelling New Netherland history, it actually and deliberately distorted it. However, Irving’s parody contained a political agenda as well. As McGann points out in his article, Irving’s history attacked Jeffersonian politics. Irving used New Netherland to undermine

Jeffersonian claims. Washington Irving’s A History of New York is positive about some elements of the colony (mostly about Peter Stuyvesant) and negative about other people and groups in New

Netherland (for example the aldermen). Perhaps he did not aim to create stereotypes of the inhabitants in his story, but the image of the smoking, drunk, fat Dutch stayed on in the imagination.

Though actively involved in New Netherland politics at the time, Adriaen van der Donck on the other hand really tried to promote New Netherland in his book Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant. He was way more positive and more objective about the people and the country. However, the book by Van der Donck turned out to be less influential than the book Irving produced. Unlike Irving who wrote about the political situation in New Netherland, Van der Donck focused more on economic, social, and geographic topics. Both Adriaen van der Donck (financial arguments) and Washington Irving

(entertainment) had a different reason to write their books about New Netherland.

The books about New Netherland before 1850 were written by, at best, amateur historians with an agenda. Interestingly, particularly in Irving’s case, politics was very much part of their writings.

The odd relationship between history and politics that these early works introduced returns in later books about New Netherland.

20 Chapter 2: end 19th century/beginning 20th century

At the end of the 19th century, the historiography of New Netherland started to change. The writers at the time started to develop a historical interest. They were not professional historians and academics, however, even though at the end of the 19th century the idea of history as a science (done by professionals) already had been developed at German universities and was carried over to the

United States.1 In 1884, the American Historical Association (AHA) was founded. One of its main goals was to stimulate professional, that is to say academic and objective studies of the past.2 Professional historians were supposed to replace the amateur historians (nonprofessionals) who had been writing history and the highly political and subjective works they had produced: scholars declared the 20th century “the era of the end of ideology.”3 The example of Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer clearly shows that the AHA was not fully successful, however.

That the professionalization of the historians was not successful in excluding the amateur historians was not the only flaw in this development. According to Peter Novick, the professionalization of the American (and German) historians was very limited. The professional education offered at universities (and stimulated by the organization) did not live up to the modern standards of professionalism. For instance, before 1907 the presidents of the AHA were almost all amateur historians; only from 1928 on, they were almost all professionals. The historian’s education was also limited, since it took only two years and the dissertation was “hardly more than what would later count as a seminar paper.”4

The beginning of the 20th century saw a huge increase of American interest in the Dutch and in Dutch culture. As Edward Blok wrote in an editorial in The Ladies’ Home Journal, in 1903 twenty

1 Ann Wilson, ‘review of Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream: The “objectivity Question” and the American Historical profession’ in: Ex Post Facto (Vol. 11 2002) 173 2 Peter Novick, That Noble Dream The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (New York 1988) 21 3 Novick, That Noble Dream 415 4 Ibidem, 48 21

thousand more Americans visited the Netherlands than in the year before. Moreover, in this article, he continues that the four vital institutions of the United States (freedom of education, freedom of religious worship, freedom of press and freedom of suffrage) “came to America directly from

Holland.”5 He goes on to describe the Dutch influence on America by stating that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were based on the Dutch documents, and point to many more things and customs which are now (and back then) common in the United States coming from the Dutch

Republic. He ends with the following sentence: “so in days to come will our more enlightened historians set aside much that has been written of the influences that shaped America, and substitute facts for theories. It will be interesting, then, to see to what nation will be given the credit for being

‘The Mother of America’.”6

There were more signs of the increased interest. For instance, there was a festival in Holland,

Michigan called Tulip Time which celebrated its Dutch heritage. It was founded in the 1930s and by the mid-1930s it already had over half a million visitors per year. That the festival was founded at that time was no coincidence. In 1937 a Marcus Lee Hansen came with ‘Hansen’s Law’. ‘Hansen’s Law’ was that

“the third generation [of immigrants] seeks to remember what the second forgot”7 Although the organizers used many stereotypes in their efforts to “reinvent and promote a new view of Dutch

America”8, the festival is a great example of the so called “Dutch Mania”.9 Annette Stott describes it as

“Consideration of a wide range of cultural indicators, from tourism and advertisements to high fashion and interior design, demonstrates a widespread turn-of-the-century belief in a deeply rooted cultural relationship between the Netherlands and the United States.”10 At this time the image of the Dutch immigrants in America changed from black dressed Protestants to a more idyllic stereotype.

5 Edward Bok, ‘The Mother of America’ in: The Ladies’ Home Journal, no. 11 (Oct 1903) 16 6 Bok, ‘The Mother of America’ 16 7 Michael Douma, ‘Tulip Time and the Invention of a New Dutch American Ethnic Identity’ in: American Studies Vol. 53 No. 1 (2014) 150 8 Douma, ‘Tulip Time’ 152 9 Annette Stott, Holland Mania the Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture (New York 1998) 11 22 10 Stott, Holland Mania 11

Another element that increased the interest in the Dutch culture at the beginning of the 20th century was the election of Theodore Roosevelt as president of the United States. The Roosevelt family had been for eight generations in the United States, but the family originated from Delft, the

Netherlands. The ties of the family with the Netherlands were even bigger, since Robert B. Roosevelt was the Ambassador in the Netherlands from 1888 until 1890 and the family was an active part of the

Holland Society. Roosevelt also visited the Netherland during his reign and emphasized the Dutch role in world peace.11 Holland Mania stopped after the First World War. Contemporary developments in

Europe took away the interest from the Dutch Republic, while the war made traveling from the

Netherlands to the United States and back impossible. As Annette Stott writes: ”Holland Mania died a quiet death in the 1920’s. Paintings, prints, and photographs of the Netherland were stored away in dust and history reverted to the theory of a heritage dominated by England. But the brief period in which the United States saw itself through a Dutch lens can provide insight into Americans’ continuing efforts to establish their place in history and to construct a national image on the basis of ethnic heritage.”12

One of the writers who wrote about New Netherland in the beginning of the 20th century is

Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer. She was born on February 23, 1851 in New York City in a wealthy family and she is an example of an amateur historian. Both her parents came from a family with

American roots dating back from the 17th century.13 She lived for 5 years in Dresden, were she married

Schuyler van Rensselaer; when she returned to America and moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey, she started to write for multiple newspapers (for instance American Architect and Building News, the

Independent).14 After the death of her husband, whose family can be traced back to Kiliaen van

Rensselaer,15 in 1884, she moved back to New York. New York was always Mariana Schuyler van

11 Stott, Holland Mania 251-252 12 Ibidem, 254 13 Lois Dinnerstein, Opulence and Ocular Delight, Splendor and Squalor: Critical Writings in Art and Architecture by Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer (Ann Arbor 1979) 11 14 Judith K. Major, ‘Biography of Mariana Van Rensselaer’ in: The Cultural Landscape Foundation (www.tclf.org/pioneer/mariana-van-rensseaer/biography-mariana-van-rensselaer) (15 November 2008) 23 15 Dinnerstein, Opulence and Ocular Delight 27

Rensselaer’s passion and was most of the time the topic of her articles and books.16 In her career, she wrote about art, architecture and history.17 She wrote thirteen books and 230 articles (excluding newspaper articles).18 That she was influential can been seen in the fact that Augustus Saint-Gaudens

(a famous sculptor) made her a relief plague, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New

York.19 Archinect.com calls her the founding mother of architecture criticism and a pioneer on the field.20 The importance of her work on architecture can also been seen by the republishing of her article

“Client and Architect” by Places Journal in 2013.21 In 1934, she died at the age of 82 after a series of illnesses.22

Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer is a clear example of an amateur historian of the end of the

19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Although she did not have any university education

(and therefore was no professional historian), she wrote her book with the single goal of writing a

“professional” history of her native city New York. This is for instance indicated by the fact that she used a huge number of sources. It took her ten years to do the research of her book.23 With her wealthy background (and influence) and the few years she lived in Germany (where the idea of history as a science began), Schuyler van Rensselaer is the best person to represent this period between the writers in the 17th and 18th century and the modern historians of the 21st century. While female writers and historians like Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer were a minority among their colleagues, they were a significant part of them.24

16 Lisa M. Koeningsberg, Professionalizing domesticity: A tradition of American women writers on architecture, 1848-1913 (Ann Arbor 1987) 67 17 Major, ‘Biography of Mariana Van Rensselaer’ 18 Cynthia Doering Kinnard, The Life and Works of Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer, American Art Critic (Ann Arbor 1977) 294 19 Thayer Tolles, ‘Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The New Metropolitan Museum of Art’ in: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (v. 66, no 4, 2009) 20 Mariana van Rensselaer, Founding Mother of Architecture Criticism on http://archinect.com/news/article/68593791/mariana-van-rensselaer-founding-mother-of-architecture- criticism (seen 25-5-2015) 24 21 Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer, ‘Client and Architect’ in: Places Journal (February 2013) 22 Kinnard, The Life and Works of Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer 293 23 Ibidem, iii 24 An appendix of a AHA report shows that in 1900 a tenth of the MA alumni were women: http://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/archives/report-of-the-aha-

About the world of architecture and criticism Alexandra Lange said: “Architecture and criticism may be a ‘world of men,’ but women have been in that world from the very start.”25 However, Schuyler van Rensselaer was limited by her gender in her work. When someone suggested her to start an article, she replied: "as ... with almost all of my sex, I have family duties which must take precedence of all others."26 In the 1880’s, Schuyler van Rensselaer focused more on landscaping and art instead of architecture, which was considered more suited for women. Since she did not have an education, she was always worried that her technical knowledge would be insufficient for architecture.27 However,

Schuyler van Rensselaer was highly appreciated. In the 1890’s, she was already considered to be one of the “best-known art critics of America”.28 Alexandra Lange said about Van Rensselaer’s recognition:

“She also received a number of literary honors, including a gold medal from the American Academy of

Arts and Letters. Gebhard credits Henry-Russell Hitchcock, in his own 1936 monograph on H.H.

Richardson, as the first to appraise Van Rensselaer as a critic and historian. Her study of Richardson has been taken seriously through the century; it has been cited by all subsequent historians.”29 As this quote, the sculpture of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the respected newspapers she worked for indicate, she was very respected and taken seriously in all of the fields she worked in.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer wrote her History of the

City of New York in the seventeenth century. Around this time, her son and mother died, but in 1909 she finally finished her book.30 She wanted to write two parts, the first part about New Amsterdam and the second part about New York. However, she would not live long enough to finish the second

committee-on-the-status-of-women/appendix-e-proportion-of-women-to-men-receiving-phd-and-ma-degrees- between-1900-and-1970 25 Alexandra Lange, ‘Founding Mother, Mariana van Rensselaer and the rise of criticism’ in: Places Journal (February 2013) 26 Koeningsberg, Professionalizing domesticity (Ann Arbor 1987) 74 27 Ibidem, 83 28 Dinnerstein, Opulence and Ocular Delight 4 29 Lange, ‘Founding Mother’ 11 25 30 Cynthia Doering Kinnard, The Life and Works of Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer, American Art Critic (Ann Arbor 1977) 38

part.31 It was very well received with Literary Digest naming it one of the best fifty books of 1909.32

Schuyler van Rensselaer offers different estimates of the historical importance of New Netherland and the English colonies. “It is possible to write adequately of early New England of Virginia saying very little of New Netherland. It is not possible to write of New Netherland without saying a great deal about New England and something about the southern colonies.”33 However, still, she was positive about the Dutch colony. “In short it is not more justifiable to think of New Amsterdam as a slow-witted, illiterate place than as a drowsy, uneventful place. The more closely we read it chronicles in the words of its own founders and fosterers the more clearly we perceive how civilized, how modern it was in its essential habits of mind. If an American of to-day could be transported back two hundred and fifty years he would find himself more comfortable at home on Manhattan than anywhere else.”34 She wrote the book because there was “the need for an historian to set the record straight, to clarify misunderstandings, expose falsifications, and restore to New Yorkers as much pride in their history as

New Englanders had in theirs.”35 Schuyler van Rensselaer lived for most of her life in New York, but she spent many summers in Newport, Rode Island where an uncle had a house.36 Therefore, she knew both the view of the old English colony and the view of the Old Dutch colony. As the quote suggests, the way New England was seen was much more positive than the way New Netherland was viewed. This was inaccurate according to Schuyler van Rensselaer and she wanted to reevaluate the perspective.

Her goal was to write a story opposing Irving’s and give the New Yorkers a history to be proud of. She wanted a story that could serve as an alternative to the Puritan New England history.

Schuyler van Rensselaer did not see the political struggle going on in the Dutch colony that

Jacobs and Shorto would see a hundred years later (in the next chapter). As she writes in her preface:

“In its Dutch days, of course, New York did not stand with any of the English colonies in their efforts to

31 Kinnard, The Life and Works of Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer 289 32 Ibidem, 288 33 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York vi 34 Ibidem, 483-484 35 Kinnard, The Life and Works of Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer 287 36 Ibidem, 158 26

preserve or to secure self-governing powers.”37 This can also be seen in the limited attention she gives to Van der Donck. Schuyler van Rensselaer was not very politically involved, not in her book and not in life. She wrote multiple articles against women suffrage. She called women “not inferior but different” and argued that “the work of the world must be divided”. Furthermore, she also called women “the world’s educator” and “men the world’s executive”.38 This would suggest that according to Schuyler van Renssealaer women should have no interest in politics and consequently not discuss politics.

Her book aims to correct earlier depictions of New York’s Dutch past. She clearly blames

Washington Irving for the misperceptions about New Netherland history and the stereotypes that developed.

Irving’s Knickerbocker History is, of course, the chief example of a book thus fundamentally faulty; or,

more exactly, it is a book which, written as a jest, was accepted as a history (if as a humorous history)

of a period with which no historian had yet familiarized the public. To-day it shares the fate of many

another classic. Few people read it, fewer enjoy it; but its reputation is still great, and the substance of

what it says, and above all the tone in which it is written, having tinctured the thoughts and the writing

of three generations, still affect the point of view of many an American, not merely distorting his ideas

about this fact or that, this personage of another, but perverting his general mental and emotional

attitude towards the place, the times, and the people in question. Even the professed historian still

sometimes helps to propagate the influence of Irving’s burlesque. More than one writer of recent days,

although otherwise serious in mood and method, quotes long passages from Diedrich Knickerbocker

while more of less explicitly telling the reader that they are not to be believed. Other recast the

substance of his fantasies without giving any warning at all, or have plainly been biased by his temper

or indirectly swayed by the general attitude of mind that it has nurtured.39

She also criticized other New Netherland authors. Another example of a book that was much used to describe New Netherland’s past before Schuyler van Rensselaer’s book was published, is the book

37 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York viii 38 Kinnard, The Life and Works of Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer 282-283 39 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York xvii-xviii 27

Description of the Province of New Albion by one Beauchamp Plantagenet of Belvil.40 However, according to Schuyler van Rensselaer neither the person Plantagenet nor the place Belvil ever existed.

The story was made up to strengthen English claims to the Dutch colony. The book was full of mistakes.

For instance it refers to the WIC before it was even established and the records of Virginia to which the book refers do not exist at all. Still, this story was used in multiple books over the years, as Schuyler van Rensselaer sums up: “This tale was embodied in the edition of 1669 of Heylin’s Cosmography which names the year 1613 as that of Argall’s visit, in 1671 in Ogilby’s America, in 1747 in Stith’s History of

Virginia, in 1757 in Smith’s History of New York, in 1780 in Chalmers’s Political Annals of the colonies.

It has since been repeated many times, as, for example, in John Fiske’s recent book on the Dutch and

Quaker Colonies. Yet its falsity was demonstrated more than half a century ago.”41 Clearly, Schuyler van Rensselaer tried to be a professional historian, by checking her sources.

Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer addresses in her book the problems that the colony had.

Although she tried to keep politics as much out of her story as possible, she was not completely successful, since her fourth chapter was called “mismanagement”. She starts this chapter with the following quote from Van der Donck’s Remonstrance: “In the infancy of this country the directors adopted wrong plans and, in our opinion, looked more to their own profit than to the country’s welfare.”42 Mismanagement was not the only problem the colony of New Netherland had. One of the problems Schuyler van Rensselaer addresses are the settlers. “Men were not leaving Holland in large numbers, as they were leaving England, because of religious or political discontent or […] for lack of industrial opportunities. Those that emigrated at this period were recruited and set out for the sake of the service thy might renter to the company or its patroons, and few could be found who were willing to.”43 But the biggest problem was that the colony never had the full priority of the WIC. “The affairs

40 Beauchamp Plantagenet, A description of the province of New Albion (London 1648) seen in: Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 24 41 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 24 42 Adriaen van der Donck, Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States General of the United Netherlands (1649) 423 quoted in: Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 100 43 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 113 28

of New Netherland seemed for many years of comparative unimportance on the long list of those with which the Company [WIC] had to deal.”44 The profits that New Netherland made were nothing in comparison to the profits the WIC made in South American and West African business transactions.

Another big aim of the WIC was simply damaging Spain. And as Schuyler van Rensselaer writes: “At the north few prizes and no rich conquests could be hoped for, no injury could be inflicted upon Spain.”45

In the meantime, the English settlers of New England were slowly settling in the area of the Connecticut

River. The New Netherlanders could not do anything about it, since they were not allowed to attack any countries which were at peace with the Dutch Republic.

About the governors at that time, Schuyler van Rensselaer was not very positive. She quotes

Captain David Pietersz. de Vries, a Dutch captain who wrote down stories of his travels to New

Netherlands: “In the East Indies no one was appointed governor unless he had first had long service and was found to be fit for it … but the West India Company sent in the first instance as superior officers persons who never had command in their lives, for which reason it must come to naught it.“46 It needs to be said that De Vries had many problems over the years with the WIC, so there could be some unresolved issues between De Vries and the WIC influencing his story. Schuyler van Rensselaer is very positive about De Vries in her book. As she writes about him in relation to an event during the Kieft war: “De Vries now risked his life again on an errand of mercy, going alone among the River Indians to redeem the child of one of his friends. He could no longer do anything for the colony at large.”47 (De

Vries now has a statue of him on the Surrogate Court in Manhattan and on top of the Zwaanendael

Museum in Lewes, Delaware.) 48

44 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 114 45 Ibidem, 116 46 David Pietersz. De Vries, Short Historical and Journal Notes of Serval Voyages made in the Four Parts of the World quoted in: Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 138 47 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 229 48 http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history//legal-history-new-york/legal-history-eras-03/history-era-03-de- 29 vries.html and http://www.mokeham.com/dutchthemag/feature-zwaanendael/ (seen 25-5-2015)

In April 1638, Willem Kieft took over from Van Twiller. Schuyler van Rensselaer writes about him: “The course of events shows that he was obstinate, domineering, and cruel; in the end of treating the Indians badly he proved himself the ‘executioner’ against whom the historian Wassenaer had lodged a prophecy.”49 Still the beginning of his reign was promising, even though the Swedes started the colony of New Sweden in the south of New Netherland. In the Dutch republic, the WIC had a plan, a New Project, for the Dutch colony. The patroons were now allowed to trade everywhere and in everything; they would be supplied by the WIC and the Republic with servants and slaves, were given full power to rule their patroonship the way they wanted and they did not have to pay any taxes anymore. Also anyone could get as much land as “they could properly cultivate, giving a ‘proper deed’ for it and after a specified time collecting ground-rents in kind for the Company.”50 Van Rensselaer was very positive about this plan. She saw it an opportunity for the middle class to get influence and saw it as a change that promoted self-government. Bok likewise sees this township system with local self- government as one of the influences of Holland on America.51

Schuyler van Rensselaer saw immediate results of the New Project. “Certainly the immediate result was something like a ‘rush’ – an infusion of life, an increase of activity, such as the province had not seen before.”52 Still, the new Project did not work as expected and two years later the WIC published a new Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions. This one was more in favor of the settlers instead of the patroons. “Any Netherlander, whether a member of the Company or not, was now permitted to establish a patroonship but might claim for it only four miles along coast or river. Any person who would transport to the province five adults besides himself might claim as ‘master or colonist’ two hundred acres with hunting and fishing privileges. If such colonists should form themselves into ‘hamlets, villages, or even cities’ they were to be permitted to choose their own magistrates after the manner customary in the fatherland [...] and to erect courts of justice. From such

49 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 152 50 Ibidem, 159 51 Bok, ‘The Mother of America’ 16 52 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 160 30

courts as well as from the patroons’ a right of appeal in all but small cases lay to the court of the director-general.”53 Also the WIC offered free transportation to the new settlers; besides the export taxes they did not have to pay any taxes and supply the money for their protection. Schuyler van

Rensselaer called this charter “the second promise of local self-government for the Dutch province.”54

Despite the new charter, Kieft was not very popular with the settlers. He was accused of being an autocrat and misusing his power. At this time the WIC was not in a good position; a truce with

Portugal and a high dividend damaged the WIC. The loss of the colonies in Brazil had as effect that the

WIC started paying more attention to the colony of New Netherland. The company decided to recall

Kieft and replace him with a supreme council, with Peter Stuyvesant in charge. Schuyler van Rensselaer is trying to change the mythical image that Stuyvesant had mostly because of Washington Irving. This is another example of Schuyler van Rensselaer trying to correct the story of Irving. “The Peter

Stuyvesant whom New York fancies it remembers is largely mythical. The real one was, indeed, a virile, picturesque, and interesting person with a violent temper that he kept in constant use and a silver bound wooden leg. But he was not the Father Stuyvesant of the story-books – wise though stern, warm-hearted through irascible, loving his people, knowing better than they what was good for them, and respected an beloved by them as a kindly despot. This governor never existed.”55 But maybe the most important decision that the WIC made was the decision about free trade. Allowing settlers to trade freely stimulated the colony’s economic growth.

Although, Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer thought that politics was not for women and she did not write much about it, she could not skip the topic completely. Schuyler van Rensselaer addresses politics on multiple occasions. She writes for instance about the Nine Men: “What they wanted in

America [New Netherland] was not to make themselves independent of Holland but to share in the benefits its home-keeping sons enjoyed to reproduce the political conditions under which they lived.

53 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 173 54 Ibidem, 173 55 Ibidem, 264 31

The men of New Amsterdam [Nine Men] thought the government of Holland their best friend and were asking its help against the West India Company which, except to draw profit form the province, never inquired whether it ‘sank or swam.’”56 The Nine men sent a petition to the Staten Generaal to complain about the WIC and Stuyvesant and how the colony was ruled. This resulted in a new charter, which recalled Stuyvesant. This infuriated Stuyvesant and as Augustine Herrman wrote to Adriaen van der Donck about what Stuyvesant did to the Nine men: “We are not only threatened, plagued, obstructed, and affronted but shall be also totally ruined.”57 The Nine men will be further discussed in the next chapter. Eventually, the first Anglo-Dutch war caused the Staten Generaal to not revoke

Stuyvesant, but let him stay in charge to defend the colony. The colony was not attacked, but the enemy was only a few miles away. The English had already gathered an army in New England and were ready to attack when they were stopped by a peace agreement.

Because Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer wanted to offer an alternative to the story of puritan

New England, the history and development of New York/New Amsterdam did not start when the

English took over. It grew and improved before the take-over. She writes that after the first Anglo-

Dutch war the “city began modestly to deserve its name.”58 And “Even the West India Company confessed that New Netherland was no longer a ‘little colony’ but a rising republic.”59 Another example of Schuyler van Rensselaer trying to give an alternative to New England is that she tried to compare

New Amsterdam and Boston. She wrote that the houses in New Amsterdam were better and the city looked nicer, even though Boston had more inhabitants. Also the “standards of cleanliness and comfort” were much higher in New Amsterdam than they were in Boston.60 However, in the 1660s, there was widespread fear that the Dutch colony would be conquered by the English. “In Holland their rulers were enjoying a mood of purblind optimism. In January, 1664, the West India Company did,

56 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 299 57 Ibidem, 312 58 Ibidem, 416 59 Ibidem, 492 60 Ibidem, 455-456 32

indeed, explain to the States General that its province was likely to be ‘torn away’ by the English.”61

Despite this statement of the WIC, the Staten Generaal refused to send soldiers, confident that the

English would not break the peace agreement with the Dutch. However, the English did attack and they conquered the province without a fight. Schuyler van Rensselaer says the following about the conquest of the English: “Thirty years of constant aggressions, thirty years of unavailing protest on the spot and futile demands for aid from Holland, had taught the New Netherlands to foresee the inevitable and to recognize it when it came. They loved their Patria [motherland] but detested their actual overlord the West India Company. They hated the Englishman, but their dread of him had grown so slowly the actual touch of his yoke could not excite such reckless bursts of courage as may follow sudden burst of rage. The moderation and the good-will of Colonel Nicolls were evident; the Articles of Surrender were clear, comprehensive, and more favorable, probably, than have ever been granted to any other captured place.”62

About Adriaen van der Donck, Schuyler van Rensselaer was very explicit. As she says: “Able, intelligent, and public spirited, and with exception of Van Dincklagen the only lawyer who had yet come to New Amsterdam, he soon grew conspicuous as the leader of its people in their struggle for self-government.”63 She sees the importance of Van der Donck as a part of the Nine men, but not, as will be discussed later, like Russell Shorto and Jaap Jacobs do as an individual. Where Shorto makes of

Van der Donck one of the main stories, Schuyler van Rensselaer mentions him a few times and gives him one page. Shorto writes about him as a “pivotal figure in the history of the colony, the man who, more than any other, and in ways that have gone unnoticed, mortared together the foundation stones of a great city.”64 Later he says about him: “at the very least he is an important figure whom history has forgotten.”65

61 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 510 62 Ibidem, 530 63 Ibidem, 262 64 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World 143 65 Ibidem, 143 33

The period between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century was a transition period. The historiography in general and for New Netherland was shifting from amateur historians to professional historians. With her book about the history of New York Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer is a great example of this transition between the two periods. While not having the education to be a professional history, she tried to integrate the elements of history as a science in her book. She wrote her book in a time when Dutch culture and the influence of the Dutch on America received more attention than ever before. This time at the beginning of the 20th century is also called the era of Holland Mania. Although Schuyler van Rensselaer, in contrast to writers like Shorto and

Jacobs, does not consider individuals such as Adriaen van der Donck an important figure, she clearly sees a political development in New Netherland: the colony changed from a trade post into a city.

However, she tries not to focus too much on the political story, since she thought that politics was not suited for women. Despite being an amateur historian, Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer tried to write

“true” history and used many sources to discover and depict the past.

34 Chapter 3: 21st century

More than 400 years ago Henry Hudson went to the other side of the world and discovered the bay next to which New York is now situated. In 2009, to mark the anniversary, the Dutch spent 10 million dollars for various events in the city. It triggered some attention, for instance: the New York

Times published articles about the anniversary, various exhibitions took place (such as the The Birth of

New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 from the New York Historical Society) and multiple websites appeared online (http://www.exploreny400.com/, http://www.henryhudson400.com/home.php, http://www.nycgo.com/ny400). However, as Arthur Gregg Sulzberger argues in his article about the celebrations: “But aside from perhaps hearing cannon fire, spotting the stately profiles of the Dutch sailing vessels shipped across the Atlantic for the occasion, or bumping into a gang of blond, blue-eyed sailors in Brooklyn Heights, New Yorkers, a busy bunch and long accustomed to spectacle, basically went about life as usual.”1 The people he quoted said: “’It’s just another event,’ said Ralph Montuoro,

67, of Queens, getting off his bicycle to negotiate the mostly Dutch crowd in Battery Park on Sunday.

‘We didn’t even know about it.’”2 On the other hand, the small interest of the New York population is not that surprising. The New York Times article of 2014 shows that the 350th anniversary of New

Amsterdam changing into New York was not celebrated at all: not by the Dutch, not by the English and also not by the city. Sam Roberts gives the following reason for it: “The reasons behind New Yorkers’ nearly unanimous indifference are, well, historical, chief among them an ambivalence toward the

British and a dispassion for the past.”3 Moreover, it was not the only time when the New Yorkers showed a lack of interest in their history. In 1964, only 300 people attended the celebration of the

300th anniversary of the founding of New York. In 1974, the year of the founding of New York was changed into 1625 which was the founding year of New Amsterdam.4 Nevertheless, from the scholar’s

1 Arthur G. Sulzberger, “400 years later, and still proud of New Amsterdam” in: New York Times (13 September 2009) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/nyregion/14dutch.html?_r=0 (seen 3-2-2015) 2 Sulzberger, “400 years later” 3 Sam Roberts, ‘350 Years Ago, New Amsterdam Became New York. Don’t Expect a Party…’ in: New York Times (August 26, 2014) A21 4 Roberts, 350 years ago A21 35

point of view there was still a lot of interest in the topic and in the 21st century many books have been published about New Amsterdam and New Netherland by both American and Dutch historians.

The increased interest in the Dutch history of New York was also reflected in the establishment of the New Netherland Project in 1974 and the New Netherland Institute (NNI) in 1986. On the website of NNI it is written: “[...] it supported the transcription, translation, and publication of the 17th-century

Dutch colonial records held by the New York State Library and State Archives. […] They represent an irreplaceable resource for researches exploring this important chapter in American history, its legacy of cultural traditions, and it qualities of tolerance, diversity and entrepreneurship.”5 At the New

Netherland Research Center (the expanded version of the New Netherland Project), Dr. Charles T.

Gehring, Dr. Janny Venema and Russell Shorto (as a Senior Scholar) have been currently doing research.6 By December 2013, the institution had already translated almost seven thousand pages of sources about New Netherland.7 The New Netherland Research Center and the New Netherland

Project influence many historians, which will be discussed later.

In the 21st century, the professional historians took control of the history of New Netherland.

The writers of the books are, with a few exceptions, university educated scholars. However, this development does not completely follow Peter Novick’s timeline. The objectivity of the historiography of New Netherland in the 21st century is questionable. Occasionally highly political, the books deal with contemporary issues such as tolerance, freedom of religion (freedom of conscience), and nationalism, often in way that exhibit explicit political ideals.

The 400th anniversary was a reason for publishing a few works on New Netherland and creating various commemorative events. One of the examples is a small book written by Geert Mak (a famous

5 New Netherland Institute, About the New Netherland Institute (www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/about-nni/) seen 30 March 2015 6 New Netherland Institute, Who’s Who (www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/about-nni-who-s-who/) seen 30 March 2015 7 New York state Library, New Netherland Research Center, (www.nysl.nysed.gov/newnetherland/nnp.htm) seen 30 March 2015 36

Dutch writer) and Russell Shorto (writer of the book The Island at the Center of the World). It is called

1609 De vergeten geschiedenis van Hudson, Amsterdam en New York (1609 A forgotten History of

Hudson, Amsterdam and New York) and was published by de Volkskrant (one of the major Dutch newspapers) and the foundation Stichting Henry Hudson 400. In the book, both authors wrote an essay about the year 1609. Mak wrote it from the Amsterdam point of view and Shorto from the New

Amsterdam perspective.

Geert Mak focuses on the city of Amsterdam at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the

17th century. Amsterdam was thriving, despite the fact that the country was at war. Actually, this war, which was the Dutch Independence War, was also the main reason why the city was growing. The conquest of Antwerp and the following blockade of the Scheldt by the Dutch in 1585 made many merchants flee to Amsterdam. These merchants had a lot of valuable information and skills. One of the consequences of their influx was that the Dutch could gain access to the Portuguese trade monopoly in Asia and Africa and they took full advantage of that. During the eight years between 1594 and 1602, already 65 ships were sent out by the Dutch over the world to trade and discover new land.8

As Mak writes: “Er was, kortom, vanaf de Jaren negentig van de zestiende eeuw, een geest van durf in deze bedaagde landen gevaren, misschien zelfs van euforie.“ 9 (There sailed, in short, from the nineties of the sixteenth century, a spirit of courage in these sedate countries, maybe even of euphoria.) The

Dutch thought that by going north they would find the way to Asia. Henry Hudson had tried this before under English flag and the Dutch had sent earlier expeditions before Hudson. The most famous of them was the expedition of Willem Barentsz in 1596. The Dutch sent Hudson with a ship called de Halve

Maen to find a northern route to Asia. They paid him 800 gulden plus an extra 200 gulden if he did not return in a year.10

8 Geert Mak, ‘Henry Hudson in Amsterdam’ in: Geert Mak and Russell Shorto, 1609 De vergeten geschiedenis van Hudson, Amsterdam en New York (Amsterdam 2009) 14-15 9 Mak, ‘Henry Hudson in Amsterdam’ 19 10 Ibidem, 20-26 37

Russell Shorto has a different approach in his essay. He continues his essay where Geert Mak ended but he focuses more on Hudson himself. He writes about Hudson’s character: “Zijn belangrijkste eigenschap was standvastigheid: hij was een niet aflatende jager, een onderzoeker naar de uitgestrektheid van de aarde. Zijn enige droom was een korte route naar Azië vinden.”11 (His most important trade was his steadfastness: he was an unremitting hunter, a researcher of the expanse of the world. His only dream was to find a short route to Asia.) This was shown when Hudson decided after a while not to pursue the northeastern route but to turn west. He made this decision thanks to the letters from his friend John Smith, who was in the English colony of Virginia. Hudson sailed to the

New World and discovered the Delaware River and the Hudson River but found out that these rivers were not leading to Asia, therefore he decided to return to Amsterdam. Before he reached Amsterdam, he was arrested by the English because he did an expedition at the expense of the mother country.

Later, he again tried to find a northeastern route (now under English flag) but this time he was stranded by a mutiny and he died at the bay which was later named after him.12

Shorto continues with the struggles of the early colonists, the purchase of Manhattan and the move of the capital from Noteneiland (modern day Governor’s Island) to Manhattan. He also mentions the reputation of New Netherland. He calls it an area characterized by lawlessness, a base for privateering and a population with pirates and prostitutes. The situation changes after 1640, when the

WIC decided to give up its monopoly on trade with the Indians. The author also describes the discussion which resulted in giving city rights to New Amsterdam and in a trade war with England. Two parties are involved in the discussion: Adriaen van der Donck who is the writer of Beschryvinge van Nieuw-

Nederlant (Shorto writes more about him in his book) and Peter Stuyvesant.13 Another element on which Shorto focuses is tolerance, not only in New Netherland but also back in the Dutch Republic.

One of the consequences of the tolerance was that from the beginning the population of New

11 Russell Shorto, ‘De toevallige nalatenschap van Henry Hudson’ in: Geert Mak and Russell Shorto, 1609 De vergeten geschiedenis van Hudson, Amsterdam en New York (Amsterdam 2009) 31 12 Shorto, ‘De toevallige nalatenschap’ 32-33 13 Ibidem, 35-41 38

Netherland was very mixed (both in terms of nationality and religion). This multiculturalism is still present in modern New York. Moreover, the ideas of free trade which were developed in New

Amsterdam and Amsterdam remained in New York.14 This is an example of Shorto focusing more on contemporary issues, which will be explained in more detail when his book is discussed.

Mak and Shorto have different approaches in their parts of the book. Shorto focusses much on contemporary topics like tolerance and multi-culturalism, where Mak focusses more on the past and the history of the Dutch Republic. Shorto’s article has a more political focus which is in line with the

New Netherland institute and Gehring. His main argument in both his book and this article is that New

Netherland and New Amsterdam had much influence on modern day New York and the United States in a whole.

In 2009, Jaap Jacobs published his book The Colony of New Netherland a Dutch Settlement in

Seventeenth-Century America. Jaap Jacobs is a professional historian who graduated from Leiden

University and spent a part of his teaching career at Leiden University, The University of Amsterdam,

Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and Ohio University.15 He was also an Erasmus

Lecturer at Harvard University and delivered lectures about History and Civilization of the Netherlands and Flanders. He is specialized in the history of the Dutch in America in 17th and 18th centuries, the

Dutch history of New York and of the Dutch in America.16

One of the goals of Jaap Jacobs’s book was to depoliticize the topic. The New Netherland

Institute and the New Netherland Project had a mission to generate more attention to the importance of the Dutch colony. Ironically, because of this aim the debate got a political focus. Russell Shorto is an example of an author who writes a lot on the political aspects of the colony (he will be discussed later in this chapter). However, like Schuyler van Rensselaer, Jaap Jacobs had to discuss the political story of New Netherland. Although he wrote more about other aspects of the colony (with thematic

14 Shorto, ‘De toevallige nalatenschap’ 41-43 15 https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=30915254 (seen 19-2-2015) 16 https://www.speakersacademy.com/nl/spreker/jaap-jacobs/ (seen 19-2-2015) 39 chapters) he also joined the political debate that was going on about New Netherland. He could not evade it.

Although the influence of the New Netherland Project is strong in Jacobs’ book, he writes in the preface that he translated the documents himself: “true historical scholarship can come only through direct contact with original sources; for me, a Dutchman used to reading seventeenth-century

Dutch documents, relying solely on translations was never an option.”17 Still, the book is dedicated to

Charles Gehring. The author describes the importance of Charles Gehring as “inestimable”. He continues: “his work, through translations, articles, and talks, has put New Netherland and the continuation of Dutch culture on the historical map.”18

Jaap Jacobs uses the introduction to describe in small paragraphs how the situation looked like for the first settlers who came to New Netherland. In order to discuss the nature and the lifestyle of the native inhabitants the author mostly uses the book by Adriaen van der Donck (The Description of

New Netherland)19. Other sources are also mentioned, for instance the book by J.F. Jameson (ed.),

Narratives of New Netherland 1609-1664. 20

Jacobs focused in his book much on the population. That is why he started his book with the society people established and why the people settled in the colony. He writes that there are various reasons and he divides them into a number of categories: employees of the WIC (military, sailors and officials), merchants, farmers and contract laborers. He marks that these categories might overlap: for example soldiers became farmers. Another category considered the orphans. The WIC waited until the colony was well-established, so the children did not have to deal with the struggles of pioneer life. In relation to the plan, Jacobs comments: “Financial considerations in Amsterdam played an important role in the orphan plan, but the welfare of the children was not disregarded. Only children of good health and suitable age were sent over, and only those who wished to go of their own free will.”21 In

17 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland ix 18 Ibidem, xi 19 Adriaen van der Donck, A Description of the New Netherlands, (J. Johnson (trans.)) (Syracuse 1968) 20 J.F. Jameson (ed.), Narratives of New Netherland 1609-1664 (New York 1909) 21 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 59 40

the end, the plan was not successful. Only one hundred orphans joined the colony. Another group of the society were the soldiers. The WIC had a policy that gave soldiers a free passage if they served the

WIC for a few years. Afterwards they would became colonists. In 1656, the WIC provided free passage for everyone who could take care of their own in New Netherland. The plan was successful but

Stuyvesant’s attitude towards those who arrived was not very positive: “[The majority are] people without a trade and therefore without work, of which some will alter become a charge of the deaconry… It would be better and more secure for the Company [WIC] to recover her advances and more useful for the country, instead of such poor people, to send over farmers and farmhands, foreigners and refugees, who are used to labor and poverty.”22 With this quote from Stuyvesant, Jacobs wanted to show that New Netherland was not all about tolerance. Stuyvesant was not happy with the people that the WIC sent to the colony and this is one of the examples that not everyone was welcome and received with open hands.

Jacobs also discusses slavery in New Netherland and the role of slaves in society. He argues:

“Although their [enslaved blacks] number was low in comparison to Virginia, Maryland, or the

Caribbean Island, enslaved blacks were a distinct feature of the New Netherland population.”23 He explains the low number of slaves by saying that New Netherland was not a plantation colony. Only after 1658, when Curacao became a transit slave port, slavery became more common in New

Netherland.24 Jacobs mentions that many people had doubts about the legitimacy of slavery, in contrast to the opinion in the Dutch Republic at that time. Some people tried to baptize the slaves, which consequently led to confusion since Christians could not hold other Christians as slaves. A sign that some of the slaves shared the religion of the colonists was that 56 black children were baptized.

However, after 1656, there were no black baptisms written down in the registers. The main reason for this was that baptized children could no longer be slaves. One step further than baptism was being a

22 E. B. O’Callaghan and B. Fernow (trans. And ed.), Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany 1853-1883) quoted in : Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 50111 23 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 35 24 Ibidem, 55 41

member of the church. In the years that the Dutch had control over New Netherland, only one former slave did actually become a member of the church.25 This shows that former slaves were not really part of society.

There was a possibility for slaves to gain their freedom. While some of them were set free by their masters, others were set free after the death of their master. However, there was something called “half freedom”. Jacobs writes about it:

The first condition [for “half freedom”] was that per person they had to pay to the Company thirty

schepels of maize, grain, or other agricultural products annually, together with one fat pig at a value of

twenty guilders. This was a lifelong obligation, and in the case of default the blacks would relapse into

slavery. The second condition was that, if their services were called for, they would be obliged to serve

the WIC on normal terms of payment. The third condition was the most controversial. Both their existing

children and any children as yet unborn would “remain bound and obligated serve the honorable west

Indian Company as lijffeygenen [serfs].26

Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer mentions something similar. She calls them ‘half slaves’; as she notes,

“Others, called ‘half slaves,’ worked week-and-week or month–and-month about for the Company and for themselves.”27 Nevertheless, the slaves had some rights. They could pick their own marital partners and had some freedom of movement. They also had a few legal rights and they were protected against bad treatment by their masters. Jacobs concludes that slavery in New Netherland was relatively mild in comparison with the slavery in the south and in the Caribbean. However, he writes: “Although its regime may have been of a mild nature, it was still slavery. The status of blacks, enslaved or not, was low.”28 The example of church membership confirms this. The role of slavery in New Netherland is an example of Jaap Jacobs trying to focus more on society instead of the political tradition and development of the colony. He is primarily a social historian.

25 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 172-176 26 A.J.F. van Laer (trans. and ed.) Council Minutes, 1638-1649 (New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vol 4) 212-213 quoted in Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 204 27 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 466 28 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 206 42

Jacobs does discuss the structure and the laws of the colony. He clarifies it by providing an example of the installation of the magistrates in Oostdorp (modern day Westchester): “The presence of council members at the installation of magistrates, reminded the community that director general and council [the New Netherland council] had the last word over the affairs of New Netherland.”29 This was a result of the Staten Generaal, which gave extensive rights in the founding to the WIC. The WIC could appoint its own directors and schouten, send soldiers, maintain the order and it was in charge of trading. Jacobs describes the law in New Netherland in this way: “The system of justice in force in the colony in the early period was thus a mixture of regular maritime law and the practice current in the

Dutch Republic. Gradually, the latter prevailed. The only exception was the military law, which retained its own characteristics, such as the nature of punishments.”30 The schouten the WIC could appoint would be the first district attorneys in America.31

While Jacobs wanted, like Schuyler van Rensselaer, to avoid politics as much as possible, like her he could not skip the topic completely. Jacobs chooses to discuss the topic focusing on the administrative institutions instead of judging the politicians (such as the governors). He discusses the political structures of colony and the influences that they had on New Netherland without putting them in a modern context. Also in contrast to Shorto, Jacobs does not write about the influence of these political structures on modern day New York and even America until his conclusion. Despite trying not to make his book political, he still joins with his book the political discussion about New

Netherland.

One of the political institutions Jacobs discusses are the advisory bodies created by the WIC.

The first one was the Twaalf Man (Twelve Men). Yet, it could only give advice when the director asked for it and it did not have the right to arrange meetings by itself.32 The men were allowed to give advice

29 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 62 30 Ibidem, 66 31 A.J. Reiss, “Public Prosecutors and Criminal Prosecution in the United States of America”, Juridical Review (April 1975) 32 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 86 43

only in the case about the murder of Swits, which started the Kieft War.33 During this war, Kieft (the director at the time) discharged the Twelve Men. Somewhat later the “Eight Men” board was founded.

It consisted of the eight burghers the director could consult. In contrast to the Twelve Men, the Eight

Men had some rights; for instance they could recruit soldiers. Yet, similarly to the Twelve Men they could not meet independently. Both boards were dismissed because they asked for more influence and demanded more rights.34 Nevertheless, there was a huge difference between the petitions the

Eight Men and the Twelve Men submitted. The Twelve men gave their petition about changes only to

Governor Kieft, while the Eight Men gave their petition to the “owners and rulers of new

Netherland.”35

The council of Eight Men was replaced by Stuyvesant by the Nine Men. In this board the population could nominate people, from whom Stuyvesant would pick nine. They were called gemeentsmannen or gemeijnsluijden (councilors of the community) and again they were not allowed to meet on their own initiative. However, three members of the board could join the council every

Thursday when they dealt with cases of civil law.36 Schuyler van Rensselaer calls them the people’s tribunes and describes them as “good spokesmen and agents of the community.”37 One of the things the Nine Men did was sending a letter to the Staten Generaal to ask for more representation. The most famous of the supporting documents was the letter Vertoogh van Nieu-Nederlandt (Representation of

New Netherland) by Adriaen van der Donck (who ended up imprisoned by Stuyvesant for a short while). It looked as if the Vertoogh was going to be successful; however, as Jacobs wrote: “His plans for the reform of the New Netherland government had been crushed by the internal politicking in the

Dutch Republic.”38

33 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 181 34 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 86 35 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 237 36 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 86 37 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 237 38 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 86 44

Eventually, the Nine Men became a municipal government; they gradually grained more judicial and administrative power and duties. The board contained one schout, two burgemeesters

(who were in charge of administrative tasks and together with the schepenen responsible for justice) and five schepenen. At this point a trading post was changing into settlement colony.39 Jacobs perceived this as a turning point. This is in contrast to Shorto, who perceives the abolishment of the

WIC monopoly as the major change. Shorto calls it a “crucial turn of events” and the consequences

“electric” and “far-reaching.”40

Jaap Jacobs does not only focus on the political structures in New Amsterdam and of the WIC.

He also discusses the system of patroonship, which was a compromise between the colonization and commerce factions in the WIC. The author writes: “In this compromise, the trade faction achieved its goal of retaining the WIC’s monopoly on the fur trade, and the colonization faction obtained the opportunity to try its hand at colonization, at its own expense.”41 Schuyler van Rensselaer also discusses the patroonships. Jacobs calls the compromise, which was written in the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, as “mark[ing] the first step towards local self-government in New Netherland.”42 He quotes Kiliaen van Rensselaer to explain what exactly the rights of patroonship concerned: “[The patroons have the right to] own and possess and hold from the Company as a perpetual fief of inheritance, all the land lying within the aforesaid limits, together with the fruits, plats, minerals, rivers and springs thereof, and the high, middle, and low jurisdiction, rights of fishing, fowling, and grinding, to the exclusion of all others.”43 The patroonships were not very successful. Only Rensselaerswyck survived, even though neither Van Rensselaer nor his children ever went to the colony. In contrast

Irving’s History of New York refers to Van Rensselaer being in New Amsterdam: “He tarried but a short

39 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 87-99 40 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World 105 41 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 69 42 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 91 43 A.J.F. van Laer (translator and ed.), Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts, Being the Letters of Kiliaen van Rensselear 1630-1643, and Other Documents Relating to the Colony of Rensselaerswyck (Albany 1908) 140 45 quoted in: Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 69

time in New Amsterdam; merely to beat up recruits for his colony.”44 However, Russell Shorto and

Schuyler van Rensselaer confirm that the old patroon never visited New Netherland. As Shorto argues:

“Van Rensselaer would never live to see his domain.”45 Schuyler van Rensselaer says something similar:

“None of these Amsterdam investors [Van Rensselaer, Samuel Blommaert, Samuel Godyn and Michiel

Paauw (all were patroons)] ever came to America but they and others continued to take up lands.”46

Jacobs explains why Rensselaerswyck was the only remaining patroonship: “Rensselaerswyck was spared thanks to its good relations with the Indians and to the efforts of Kiliaen van Rensselaer to invest in the future of Rensselaerswyck by furnishing it with people and cattle. He established an administration that resembled that of manors in the rural areas of the Netherlands.”47 Schuyler van

Rensselaer also mentions that Van Twiller was a nephew of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, which probably also influenced the survival of Rensselaerswyck.48

Jacobs also concentrates on the economic situation of New Netherland. The inhabitants used beaver skin and sewant (Wampum as Shorto calls it)49 as a currency because there was a lack of money in New Netherland. Jacobs describes sewant in a following way: “Sewant consisted of strings of beads made form shells, mostly found on Long Island. The Indians had many ritual uses for sewant, but for the colonists it quickly acquired the role of currency. Both the colonists and the Indians also used sewant as a gift in diplomatic negotiations.”50 The importance of sewant in the trade in New

Netherland can be also noticed in the fact that it was still used until the beginning of the 18th century.

After the 18th century, it was still used when the colonists traded with the Indians.51 Jacobs describes it in his book because the use of sewant shows the huge importance of Indians for especially the early colonists. Not only were they very important for trade, but also as allies for diplomatic reasons.

44 Irving, A History of New York 111-112 45 Shorto, The Island 102 46 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 70-71 47 Ibidem, 75 48 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 147 49 Shorto, The Island 117 50 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 107 46 51 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York xvii-xviii

The importance of the Indians could also be seen in the fur trade. The beaver fur trade was the most important trade for the colony. This trade grew over the years, especially after the WIC gave up its monopoly. It continued to grow until 1657 when intra-Indian wars and overhunting caused a decline. After the monopoly ended, the competition for the beaver skin became fierce. In order to be on good terms with the Indians a few colonists gave them forbidden gifts such as weapons and alcohol.

Other traders used force to make sure that the Indians would trade their stock to them.52 Schuyler van

Rensselaer writes that the relationship between the Dutch and the Indians were good and when something happened between them it was according to Schuyler van Rensselaer “the governor, not the people, of New Netherland [who] was chiefly responsible for it, and it was not a characteristic but an exceptional episode.”53 In terms of the agricultural sector of New Netherlands, Jaap Jacobs says the following: “The agricultural sector in New Netherland could never meet the high hopes in patria [home land]. New Netherland would never become a granary for other Dutch colonies or for the Dutch

Republic.”54 Moreover, the tobacco industry in New Netherland could never compete with the tobacco from Virginia, in both quality and quantity. But still, in 1664, the export of tobacco was bigger than the export of peltries.55 Jacobs’s argument about the economic situation in New Netherland is very similar to Schuyler van Rensselaer’s. She sees a gap between the expectations at the Dutch Republic and the economical results of the colony too. This is one of the reasons that the colony of New Netherland never had the priority of the WIC.

One of the main stereotypes that was developed after Washington Irving’s book was that the colonists were most of the time in the taverns. Jacobs also mentions the taverns of New Netherland in his book. However, he was more positive about them than Irving. He called them very important for the cohesion of the community and for the colony’s social life. Nevertheless, the authorities were afraid that if they did not regulate the taverns, a quarter of New Amsterdam would be one big tavern.

52 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 109-116 53 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 64 54 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 128 55 Ibidem, 124-128 47

This is why the director general introduced a whole range of different regulations: new taverns needed permission, selling drinks to Indians was forbidden, fights had to be reported immediately, on weekdays after nine o’clock selling alcohol was prohibited, on Sundays taverns were not allowed to be open before three, and each of the tavern had to be registered. If you broke one of these regulations, you could be fined or even lose your license.56 Shorto on the other hand is more on Irving’s side: “The island [New Amsterdam] spawned taverns and breweries with remarkable speed – at some point in the early years one-quarter of its building were devoted to making or selling alcohol.”57 In the discussion of the taverns in New Netherland Jacobs is very much opposing Irving and to a lesser extent

Shorto. He sees a very important role for the taverns in the society and a government that tried to regulate the taverns and limit the problems coming from them. Although Jacobs did not mention

Irving’s and Shorto’s point of view, he tried to undermine their stereotypes with facts.

Religion was a very important element in the 17th century and in the colony of New Netherland its status resembled the one it had in the Dutch Republic. The Provisional Regulations of the first colonists in 1624 stated the following: “[The colonists were not allowed to practice any] other divine worship than that of the Reformed religion in the way it is at present practiced here in this country…, without however persecuting anyone on account of his religion, but leaving to everyone the freedom of his conscience.”58 Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer quotes the Charter of Freedom and Exemptions of 1640 which had the same kind of message. “No other religion shall be publicly admitted in New

Netherland excepting the Reformed as it is at present preached and practiced by public authority in the United Netherlands; and for this purpose the Company shall provide suitable preachers, schoolmasters, and comforters of the sick.”59 It corresponded with the WIC “philosophy” which had

Calvinist origins. In 1624, the WIC also sent a ziekentrooster (comforter of the sick) to New Netherland.

56 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 132-134 57 Shorto, The Island 83 58 A.J F. van Laer (trans. And ed.), Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624-1626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library (San Marino 1924) 2-5 quoted in: Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 144 59 The Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions (1640) quoted in: Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 201 48

There was no policy regarding the religion in New Netherland. As Jacobs writes, it was more, “the result of ad hoc decision than of preconceived plans”60. The Dutch Reformed Church in America remained under control of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Dutch republic until it gained independence in

1772. Over the years, there were many conflicts between directors and ministers. Because of the distance between the Dutch Republic and New Netherland, it was hard for the WIC to decide which side in these religious quarrels was right. Consequently, most of the time nothing happened or both sides were recalled to the Republic. When Stuyvesant became the director the relationship improved because Stuyvesant was a devoted Calvinist.61

Even though Calvinism was not the only religion in New Netherland the magistrates had to swear “that we shall help to maintain here the Reformed Religion according to God’s Word and the regulations of the Synod of Dordrecht and not publicly tolerate any sect.”62 Freedom of conscience was still guaranteed. For some religions this was not enough and in 1649 the Lutherans tried to get their own minister. This was rejected because the authorities were afraid that “all sorts of sects would be encouraged by it, resulting in New Amsterdam becoming a haven of refuge for heresies.”63 This showed that there was no freedom of religion and that the Provisional Regulations was not only a document, but it was also reality.

There were also some problems with Quakers, who did not recognize any authority. Even though it resulted in many arrests the Quakers still had their freedom of conscience. Smaller religious groups in New Netherlands were Mennonites, Roman Catholics, Puritans and Independents. These groups were mostly left alone.64 As I said before, there were some people who tried to convert the slaves and in the Provisional Regulations stood that the colonist had the duty to convert the Indians.

The directors in Amsterdam, when accused of not putting enough effort in conversion efforts, reacted

60 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 145 61 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 146-154 62 Charles T. Gehring (trans. And ed.), ‘Fort Orange Court minutes, 1652-1660’ in: New Netherland Documents Series, vol 16 part 2 (Syracuse 1990) 236-237 quoted in: Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 160 63 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 162 64 Ibidem, 167-172 49

as follows: “Everyone who has been in the company of the indianen in and around New Netherland will be able to say that it is not humanly possible to bring the adults to the christian faith, also it belongs to the position of the predicant to make an effort in that, and it is the duty of the director to assist him therein.”65 In relation to the native population the colonists faced the problem of a huge cultural gap and language problem. Both these barriers were smaller in relation to the slaves. Still, the colonist and ministers tried to convert the Indians, but the problems were too big to be successful.66 These attempts to bring Christianity to the Indians shows again the nature of the relationship between the Indians and the colonists.

There was also a small group of Jews in New Netherland. In 1654, a group of twenty-three Jews arrived in the area but Stuyvesant refused to give them permission to stay (which was not very surprising, since it also happened in Southern cities in the Dutch Republic like Tilburg and Maastricht).

Jacobs wanted to show with this refusal of Stuyvesant that not everyone was welcome and that tolerance in New Netherland was limited. If it was up to Stuyvesant the colony would be a protestant colony, without any Jews. It needed an intervention of the WIC directors before the Jews could stay and trade in New Netherland on condition “that they would not become a burden to the Company or to the deaconry.”67 Even after this intervention, the directors tried to prevent the Jews from becoming permanent residents and they did everything to make them feel uncomfortable. For instance, Jewish people had to pay a special tax and they were not allowed to have their own burial ground, join the burgher guard, and buy any real estate. Only when the directors saw that the Jews were going to stay, they reversed most of the measures. From then on, the Jews were allowed to practice their religion, but not in public. In court they were treated equally but they remained second-class burghers. As

Jacobs writes: “It is not evidence of a desire for tolerance in the colony. On the contrary, colonist, city government, the ministers, and director and council were united in their anti-Semitism.”68

65 E. B. O’Callaghan and B. Fernow (trans. and ed.), Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, vol 1 (Albany 1853) 334 and 340 quoted in: Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 177 66 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 176-179 67 Ibidem, 199 68 Ibidem, 202 50

The example of the Jews indicates Jacobs’s view on tolerance in New Netherland. He notices much less tolerance in New Netherland than Shorto and Edward I. Koch (the Mayor of New York between 1978 and 1989). Koch wrote in his introduction for a catalogue of an exhibition that the Dutch tradition of tolerance was transferred to New York.69 Jacobs does not find an exceptional position for religion and politics in New Netherland.

Another important element in Jacobs’s book discusses the elite and the colony’s social structure. The society in New Netherland as well as its elite had a dynamic character. There were people coming and going and the chances to climb the social ladder were bigger than in the Dutch

Republic. However, when the settlements and the colony grew bigger, people felt a need to establish

“customary societal and legal mores of the Dutch Republic in the colony, such as membership in the burgher guard and burgher right”70. It made social mobility more difficult. Mariana Schuyler van

Rensselaer disagrees with Jacobs. She described the situation in New Netherland as the following:

In New Amsterdam there were as yet no political privileges but there were no oligarchical restrictions,

there was no aristocratic atmosphere; and, when political agitation began, the humblest free settler had

as good a chance as his richer and better-born neighbors to make his voice heard and his influence felt

and to win the prize of office. There was less civil liberty but more natural liberty [than in New England].

There were none but ex officio distinctions of rank and these, of course, did not amount to distinctions

of class. No sumptuary laws were even thought of, and no ordinances concerned themselves with forms

of address or with social questions of any sort. […] Only a Dutch colony could contentedly have become

so cosmopolitan in blood that all class distinctions of necessity disappeared.71

Schuyler van Rensselaer describes here something similar to what Gordon S. Wood describes in his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution about American culture in the early United States.

Instead of a feudal system like in Europe, Wood saw a benevolent system in America. “But in America, where ‘the feudal distinctions of tenant and lord are … unknown … the dependence of our citizens is

69 Edward I. Koch, “Foreword by Mayor Koch of New York” in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982) 4 70 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 185 71 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 220 51

only on each other for the supply of mutual wants,’ and this ‘produces mutual confidence and good- will’ between people’”72 Although Wood saw different classes, he saw in the elite a “willingness to believe that ‘the other’ had a reality equal to one’s own, which was a powerful force in the sentimental revolution that swept through Western culture in the latter half of the eighteenth century.”73

Jacobs does not agree and sees multiple layers in the society. However, he sees a high social mobility between the different social classes. An example of these classes were two kinds of burghers in New Netherland – great and small burghers. Jacobs describes the small burghers as “all those who had been resident in the city for one year and six weeks and kept ‘fire and light’ (occupied a house), all inhabitants that had been born in the city, everyone who married a burgher’s daughter who had been born in the city, and finally all those who wished to carry out trade or exercise a trade in the city and to that end had paid twenty guilders to the burgemeesters.”74 Great burghers were “members of the provincial government, to burgemeesters and schepenen, to the ministers, and to the officers of the burgher guard above the rank of vaandrig (ensign). Others could obtain great burgher right ton payment of fifty guilders to the burgemeesters. This was applicable in all cases to current and former magistrates, and great burgher right was hereditary via the male line. Both great and small burgher right were invalidated if the burgher left the city and did not keep “fire and light” there.”75 Great burghers had the advantage that they were exempted from guard duty and could not be arrested by lower courts. Being a burgher was also a requirement to be a part of the city government. This chapter about burghers shows Jacobs’s focus on the colony’s social structure instead of its political elements.

He explains how social mobility worked and changed in the colony. Jacobs shows that there was a social structure in the colony and that there was an organization in New Netherland similar to what the Van Rappard documents did. (These Van Rappard documents will be discussed later.)

72 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York 1991) 220 73 Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution 224 74 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 193 75 Ibidem, 193 52

In his epilogue, Jacobs explains why the Dutch did not get the colony back from the English after the end of the war. “By 1664, New Netherland did not fit any more into the changing Dutch

Atlantic economy. Despite its early Brazilian adventures, the Dutch Atlantic empire was this time based on shipping and trade - the main strength of the republics economy - not on colonial territorial conquests, […] Both in 1667 and 1674, New Netherland was merely a convenient bargaining chip for the Dutch Republic. It was expendable.”76 This is similar to what Schuyler van Rensselaer argues, who, also mentioned that New Netherland was never a priority for the WIC and the Dutch Republic.

Jacobs did not write much about what remained of the Dutch colony after the English took over. He waited until his epilogue to discuss its impact. For instance, he mentioned that the Dutch language and traditions did not disappear from the colony when the English took over. This can be seen in the fact that when the debate of the Constitution in 1788 was held, there was a Dutch translation of the proposal draft printed in Albany (more than hundred years after the colony became

New York). Another proof is that the word ‘Dutch’ did not disappear from the proper name ‘Dutch

Reformed Church in America’ until 1867. However, Jacobs does not see and does not discuss the impact of New Amsterdam on modern-day New York the way for instance Shorto or Bok do.

Jaap Jacobs focuses more on the political situation in New Netherland than Washington Irving and Adriaen van der Donck did in their books. However, Jacobs does not portray the leaders and elite so much but their policies. Jacobs does not stop there; he goes more into the details of the society the

Dutch created—its institutions and issues such as social mobility. Moreover, Jacobs looks further than only New Amsterdam. He also discusses the patroonships and especially Rensselaerswyck.

Russell Shorto also wrote a book, The Island at the Center of the World, about New Netherland.

Shorto was, as Jacobs, influenced by the New Netherland project. He wrote on the page ‘About the

Author’: “The hub of his research for The Island at the Center of the World was the New Netherland

76 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 251

53

Project at the New York State Library, where the archives of the Dutch colony centered on Manhattan are being translated.”77 And as he continues in the acknowledgements:

This book would not exist without the work of Charles Gehring, who, as director of the New Netherland

Project, has devoted thirty years to translate the manuscript Dutch records of the New Netherland

colony. But published translations aside, for more than two years he has welcomed me into his

workspace opened his files to me, offered advice, mad introductions, and helped in dozens of other

ways. Over Vietnamese lunches and pints of microbrew beer, on the Albany waterfront and along the

canals of Amsterdam, he has been my guide. My grates thanks to you Charly. I also owe a debt of

gratitude to Janny Venema of the New Netherland Project, for similar help mixed with friendship.78

Russell Shorto is a historian and journalist who, as he writes himself, is interested in “the past, the present and the future, not necessarily in that order.”79 He wrote multiple books and articles about the Dutch in their present and past situations. As he wrote in his introduction, Shorto was influenced by the New Netherland project. The book is a clear example of a more political approach to the subject.

One can see the influence of Charles Gehring and the New Netherland Institute, since he is trying to prove that the Dutch colony was more than a group of drunken pirates and that it significantly contributed to the American society.

He writes that before Charles Gehring the story of colony of New Netherland was forgotten.

Seen as “inconsequential”, the colony was overshadowed by the English Puritans. “The colony was reduced by popular cure to a few random, floating facts: that it was once ruled by an ornery peg-legged governor [Stuyvesant] and, most infamously, that the Dutch bought the island form the Indians for twenty-four dollars’ worth of household goods.”80 According to Shorto, Gehring’s work changed that view and Shorto argues that “when this [Dutch] society founded a colony based on Manhattan Island, that colony had the same features of tolerance, openness, and free trade that existed in the home country. Those features helped make New York unique, and, in time, influenced America in some

77 Shorto, The Island iii 78 Ibidem, xi 79 http://www.russellshorto.com/about (seen 1-2-2015) 80 Shorto, The Island 3-4 54

elemental ways.”81 Shorto writes that Richard Nicolls said, when he conquered New Amsterdam in

1664, that it was “best of all His Majties owns in America.”82 The goal of Russell Shorto’s book was similar to Schuyler van Rensselaer’s book. He wanted to change the story of New Netherland into something more positive and fight the stereotypes that developed after Washington Irving’s book.

Shorto wrote his book when the interest in New Netherland was at a high level. Many books and articles about New Netherland were published at the beginning of the 21st century thanks to the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Hudson’s travels and the establishment of the New Netherland

Research Center and New Netherland Institute. The number of sources that became available with the work of Gehring was huge and Russell Shorto made the most of it. Since 2013, he has been even directly involved with the New Netherland Research Center as a Senior Scholar.83 One can clearly see the center’s influence in Shorto’s book, even more than in Jacobs’s work. Shorto follows what Gehring is trying to tell with his talks and articles, namely that the Dutch colony had an important influence on modern day New York; the colony was unlike what Washington Irving tells about it in his famous

History of New York.84

Shorto deals for instance with Irving’s stereotypes and in so doing shows the purpose of his own work. He writes that Stuyvesant was portrayed in two ways. The first one was created by the

English: “almost a cartoon character: peg-legged, cantankerous, a figure of comic relief who would do his routine, draw a few laughs, and then exit the stage so that the real substance of American history could begin”85 while the second was created by the Dutch: “a full blooded and complex; a genuine tyrant; a doting father and husband; a state’s man who exhibits steel nerves and bold military intuition while holding almost no cards and being surrounded by enemies (English, Indians, Swedes, foes from

81 Shorto, The Island 6 82 Ibidem, 8 83 New Netherland Institute, Who’s Who (www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/about-nni-who-s-who/) seen 30 March 2015 84 For instance in a video on the website of the New York State Library: http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/newnetherland/video/nnpvideo.htm and in a talk for a TEDx event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYxrw99uYe0 55 85 Shorto, The Island 9

within his own colony, even, in a sense, the directors of his company in Amsterdam). He is a man who abhors unfairness – who publicly punishes Dutch colonists who cheat the Indians in business deals – but who, in the harshness of a hard-line Calvinist minster’s son, tries to block Jews form settling in New

Amsterdam. He is a tragic figure, undone by his own best quality, his steadfastness.”86 In his book,

Shorto was not very positive about Stuyvesant. He refers to him as follows: “Indeed, one of the curiosities of Stuyvesant’s term in office wash is tendency to impress and even befriend potential enemies – English ones in particular – while treating his own colonists more or less like dirt.”87 At the end of the book, the author writes very sarcastically: “Some of his colonists may have argued the proposition, but he apparently had a heart.”88 It is not very surprising that Shorto is not positive about

Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant, as an elite hardline autocrat, does not fit into his story of political self- government and sovereignty by the people. Adriaen van der Donck with his fight against Stuyvesant fits much better into this story.

Shorto writes about the difference between England and the Dutch Republic in a following way:

One difference between England and the Dutch Republic was contained in the abstract and to our ears

wan-sounding noun tolerance. England was on the verge of a century of religious wars that would see

royal heads roll and crowds of ordinary citizens flee. The Dutch – traders and sailors, whose focus was

always out there: on the other lands, other peoples, and their products – had always had to put up with

difference. Just as foreign goods moved in and out of their ports, foreign ideas, and of that matter,

foreign people, did as well. To talk about “celebrating diversity” is to be wildly anachronistic, but in the

Europe of the time the Dutch stood out of their relative acceptance of foreignness, of religious

difference, of odd sorts.89

This quote indicates the differences between Shorto and Jacobs. Where Jacobs focused more on the question why New Netherland is not a tolerant place and on the people who were not welcome, Shorto

86 Shorto, The Island 9 87 Ibidem, 237 88 Ibidem, 306 89 Ibidem, 26 56

uses tolerance as one of the main topics and as one of the main differences between New Netherland and New England. About the situation in the Dutch Republic at that time, he writes: “It wasn’t a republic in the full Enlightenment-era sense – it wasn’t of the idealistic, self-righteously stubborn, “we hold these truths to be self-evident” model that gave rise to the American republic, but rather had come into being in a piecemeal way, as towns joined together to protect their interests. But it was a bottom-up system: it came from the people.”90 Shorto tries to link the Dutch Republic, New Netherland and modern day America to each other. He answers with his book the question that Bok asked in his article (who is the Mother of America?): the Dutch.

Shorto’s story is positive from the beginning. In October 1623, the WIC was founded. It gained a trade monopoly for West Africa, the Caribbean and North America. The WIC was founded for both commercial and religious reasons. As Willem Usselincx, one of the founders of the WIC, said: “if one wants to get money, something has to be proposed to the people which will move them to invest. To end the glory of God will help with some, harm to Spain with others, with some the welfare of the

Fatherland; but the principal and most powerful inducement will be the profit that each can make for himself.”91 The WIC sent a few settlers to the new colony. Because of Dutch law, in order to claim land, the land had to be inhabited; therefore the settlers were very spread out. The settlers were told to treat the Indians well, as the instructions from the WIC to Verhust show: “He shall also see that no one do the Indians any harm or violence deceiver, mock, or contemn them in any way, but that in addition to good treatment they be shown honesty, faithfulness, and sincerity in all contracts, dealings, and intercourse, without being deceived by shortage of measure, weight or number, and that throughout friendly relations with them be maintained.”92 Schuyler van Rensselaer writes about these instructions that they were also in the benefit of the settlers themselves. She writes: “They depended more than the New Englander upon the trade in furs; and even while these were abundant in places close at hand they could be much more easily obtained by bargaining with native hunters and trappers than by

90 Shorto, The Island 27 91 Ibidem, 38 92 Ibidem, 47 57 personal quest in tangled forests and rapid streams.”93 In contrast to what Shorto calls ‘’one long-held belief’’ that the colony was unorganized, the Van Rappard documents (which were discovered when

Alexander Carel Paul George Ridder van Rappard sold his collection in 1910) prove that “a great deal of care was devoted to the colony and to the welfare of the inhabitants”94.

Shorto also discusses the purchase of Manhattan from the Indians for 60 gulden (the famous

42 dollars). According to Shorto, there are two stereotypes about this purchase which are not true.

The first one is about the American Indians being primitive. Shorto writes “the Indians were as skilled, as duplicitous, as capable of theological rumination and technological cunning, as smart and as pig- headed, and as curious and as cruel as the Europeans who met them. […] The early seventeenth century was a much more interesting time than the Wild West era, a time when Indians and Europeans were something like equal participants, dealing with one another as allies, competitors, partners.”95

Schuyler van Rensselaer confirms the statement: “In theory at least the Hollander considered the

Indian a man like himself with analogous rights to his life, liberty, and possessions. The West India

Company repeatedly prescribed that all lands taken by its settlers should be paid for to their owners’ satisfaction and that the bargain should be formally ratified and recorded; Indians were not enslaved in New Netherland; and negotiation, not war, was the customary method of securing peace with the red man.”96 This is similar to what Jacobs said about the relationship with the Indians. Where Jacobs focused more on the trade, Shorto discusses the way the colonists and the Indians communicated with each other. The second misunderstanding was that the Indians did not sell the land to the Dutch. The

Indians did not know about any possession of land and they thought that letting the settlers use the land would create an alliance. After the trade/purchase, the Indians kept using the land and expecting a warm welcome whenever they visited.

93 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 63 94 Shorto, The Island 53 95 Ibidem, 51 96 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 63 58

Shorto wants to show in his book a real development in the colony: that it was not a colony doomed to fail and looking as bad as Irving described. He starts his description of the development when, at the beginning, New Amsterdam was a company town. There was no legal system and the inhabitants were more considered employers than citizens. However, the colony did not make any profit and some of the directors of the WIC came up with the idea to get more people to New

Netherland. The plan was to let wealthy men establish plantations, patroonships, in New Netherland and let them populate these plantations themselves. Peter Minuit, the director of New Netherland at the time, was supporting the idea but the majority of the directors of the WIC did not. Eventually, the idea was rejected and Minuit was recalled, which outraged him.97. At the same time the English were denying the Dutch claim on the area. They claimed that the land was English by the right of “first discovery” of John Cabot in 1497 (who set foot on Newfoundland). The English even intercepted a

Dutch trade ship from the colony but they gave in quickly and released the ship. As Shorto puts it: “the

English had pushed, and the Dutch – who were simply the more powerful nation at the time – had pushed back. Charles [I] had served notice of England’s interest in the property in question, but just now he was not in a position to back up his words.”98 This early struggle between the Dutch and the

English over the colony, with the Dutch victorious, indicates that the Dutch were not week at the time.

Even though the colony did not make any profit and New Amsterdam was still a company town, it could resists the English.

Shorto continues about the development of the colony:

Dying from within and attacked from without, the Manhattan colony, circa 1640, was thus firmly on the

road to extinction. It wasn’t even a proper political entity: it had no government; its inhabitants were

less citizens of a republic than selfs working at the behest of a multinational company. […] But for all

that promise, it was little more than a place of chaos and slop, of barroom knife fights, soldiers

fornicating with Indian women while on guard duty, and a steady stream of wayward newcomers: hard

men hoisting themselves out of skiffs and hitting the packed soil of the Strand, purses strung around

97 Minuit would return a few years later to start under Swedish flag a colony in the south of New Netherland. 98 Shorto, The Island 74

59

their necks heavy with Carolus guilders or Spanish pieces of eight, ready to smuggle, drink, trade, whore

and be gone. Henry Hudson had ensure that the settlement was under Dutch auspices, but so far the

vaunted characteristic of Dutch society - as a pluralistic, tolerant republic – was in evidence only in a

negative way.99

However, in the next chapter Shorto writes:

History’s simplistic reading of the Dutch colony centered around Manhattan – that it was an

inconsequential gathering of nobodies until the English eventually took over and began to make a

thriving settlement of it – is based on the records of the West Indian Company. The West India Company

ran the place, and the West India Company never succeeded in making it financially viable; ergo, Never

Amsterdam never really took flight. But that logic overlooks a crucial turn of events. In 1640 the

company gave up its monopoly on trade in the region, which had kept in place from developing in any

areas expat piracy and smuggling, and declared New Netherland free trading zone. In this new free-

market territory, New Amsterdam would be the “staple port,” the hub trough which traders’ and

merchants’ ships would pass, where they would pay duties and be cleared for travel. The effect was

electric.100

In contrast to Jacobs, Shorto describes the governors and judges them and their actions. He focused more on their policies and the governor’s self, instead of only on the political institutions. For instance, Shorto writes about Wouter van Twiller, Minuit’s replacement: “To replace the capable Peter

Minuit they chose a young clerk in the company’s Amsterdam offices with no particular set of skills to recommend him, only a dull devotion to the company and a family relation to an important man connected with the colony. Immediately upon arrival in Manhattan, Wouter van Twiller set about proving himself a drunk and a nonleader. At items he even managed to combine the two traits.”101

Shorto sees in the WIC decision to give up its monopoly a turning point in the history of New

Netherland. That he picks this point as the main development is not very surprising. Free trade and the resulting economic growth of the colony fit perfectly into the story of Shorto. Capitalism and the free

99 Shorto, The Island 89 100 Ibidem, 105 101 Ibidem, 81 60 trade which comes with it are among the most important characteristics of the United States. The decision had a few consequences. First of all, free-trade gave rise to the merchant class. The merchants who were there were now convinced that there was a future in the new colony. Colonists who lived already in the colony did some trade next to their regular jobs. A baker, for instance, could also be a captain on a ship. Secondly, social mobility was on the rise. The chance to climb the social ladder was much bigger than in Europe. Altogether, free-trade contributed to the growth of New Netherland and the city of New Amsterdam in particular.102

There were also some problems. The WIC did not profit from the free trade. It lost its income from the monopoly but still had to pay for maintaining the colony, administration and protection of both the Indian allies and the colonists. In 1638, Willem Kieft took over from Wouter van Twiller and decided to tax the Indians for the protection offered. The reaction that Kieft got from the Indians was not what he expected. The Indians did not understand the taxes, since they saw the protection as part of the alliance. Shorto describes Kieft as “being rebuffed, even laughed at, by several chiefs over his demand of protection payments.”103 At the same time, Kieft decided to punish the Indians by killing a few Indians after a theft. When the Indians responded with attacks, Kieft turned the Indian tribes against each other and everything seemed to be over when the thief’s hands were cut off by one of the tribes. Shortly after this, there was an unrelated murder of a colonist by an Indian, which resulted in the Kieft War. This would eventually be one of the biggest events in New Netherland’s history as

McGann writes in his article.104 Kieft decided to form an advice board, the Twelve Men, to gain popular support. The plan backfired. The council did not advise to go to war but advised that “two or three times more a sloop be sent by the honorable director to make a friendly request without threats, for the surrender of the murderer.”105 Furthermore, the council wanted to be more than only an advice board. Its members demanded individual rights for the colonists and aimed to become a

102 Shorto, The Island 105-106 103 Ibidem, 119 104 McGann, ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ 358 105 Shorto, The Island 121 61

representative board. These requests resulted in the board’s dismissal. The board’s advice not to participate in the war showed that the colonists did not agree with the war.

Shorto sides with the board. “The ruthlessness of Kieft and other merchant warriors masks the fact that the framers and traders who made up the colony learned Indian languages, adopted Indian farming techniques, embraced the wampum trade, and, for a time and in a great many ways, tried to coexist.”106 This is similar to what Schuyler van Rensselaer wrote in her book – when there were problems with the Indians, most of the time it was because of the actions of the governor.107 At the beginning, the protest movement against Kieft was not very organized. The petitions did not have much effect until Van der Donck came from Rensselaerswyck to New Amsterdam and started to write the petitions for the colonists--lawyerly petitions that were much more effective. Kieft was forced to make peace with Indians. He asked Van der Donck to be his interpreter during the negotiations (he did not know that Van der Donck wrote the petition). Eventually, even though Kieft was sent back by the

WIC, the colonists still did not get their representatives. The WIC saw everything as a sign that the colony needed a different leader. As Shorto calls it: “They needed a committed company man who was also a true leader. Someone to keep the colonist in line. An administrator, yes, and a man who was something more – a skillful diplomat – but also something less. They needed a man of nerve and grit and guile, someone unafraid of pain. They needed a boss.”108 The story of Kieft War is another example of a fight of a hardline autocrat against the people, a moment in the rise of democracy, with the director eventually losing the battle.

Stuyvesant, Kieft’s successor, wanted to quickly solve the issue between Kieft and the

‘opposition’. He asked them both to defend their points. Stuyvesant was not completely impartial, which could be seen by the fact that Kieft was a part of the council that advised Stuyvesant about the case. The two leaders of the opposition, Cornelis Melyn and Jochem Kuyter, were sent away to the

106 Shorto, The Island 126 107 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 64 108 Shorto, The Island 145 62

Dutch Republic. They were actually on the same ship as Kieft. This ship, the Princess Amelia, did not reach the Republic. It sank at the coast of Wales.

Stuyvesant had huge plans for the colony and New Amsterdam but he needed money and to get the money, he needed the support of the colonists. In order to get this support, he founded a new board, the Board of Nine, to advise him. Everything went according to the plan, until the board wanted more and sent a letter to the Dutch Republic to “take over management of the colony.”109 Stuyvesant was furious. Van der Donck, who helped Stuyvesant on multiple occasions, was elected as the leader of the board. Stuyvesant arrested Van der Donck but the damage was already done. Melyn and Kuyter, who survived the ship disaster, got to the Republic to plead their case (eventually they succeeded).

The sentences of Stuyvesant against the two men were revoked and Stuyvesant was asked to come to the Republic to explain himself. To defend himself in the Hague, Van der Donck wrote down his complaints in what Shorto calls “perhaps the most famous document to come out of the Manhattan- based colony”110: the Remonstrance of New Netherland. Van der Donck later published it in the Dutch

Republic with huge success. The directors of the WIC wrote to Stuyvesant: “Formerly New Netherland was never spoken of and now heaven and earth seem to be stirred up by it and every one tries to be the first in selecting the best pieces [of land] there.”111 Cornelis van Tienhoven went to the Dutch

Republic to represent Stuyvesant in court. Eventually, the Staten Generaal agreed with Van der Donck:

“Among other things, they drove home that the community on Manhattan could no longer be considered an ad hoc collection of soldiers, fur traders, and whores, for whom material law could suffice. These were men of standing, who had risked everything on the promise of North America, and their government had a responsibility toward them.”112 That the Staten Generaal was in favor of Van der Donck strengthens Shorto’s argument that the Dutch Republic was the ‘Mother’ of the United

109 Shorto, The Island 193 110 Ibidem, 205 111 Ibidem, 228 112 Ibidem, 243 63

States. It indicates that the Dutch Republic supported Van der Donck in his struggle for more influence for the people.

After the English civil war, the English wanted their lost trade back. They did it by means of the

Act of Navigation, which said that only English ships could bring stock to English harbors. This act caused the first Dutch-English War. Although the war did not reach New Netherland directly, the

English came very close.113 The fact that the Dutch were again in a war situation had its consequences.

The WIC gained more influence and for Van der Donck “Overnight, things had turned upside-down. He was no longer a patriot but a radical, someone to keep watch on.”114 Van der Donck was not allowed to go back to New Netherland so he used his time in the Republic to write his Description of New

Netherland. After four years, when Van der Donck was finally allowed to go back, he was not allowed to have any position or do his work in the colony. Still, some things changed in the colony: on the 2nd of February 1653, New Amsterdam became a city with an official city government. Shorto writes:

“Amsterdam had recently installed a new, two-tiered system, and the local government on Manhattan promptly copied it.”115 As Jacobs already explained more thoroughly, it contained small burghers and great burghers.116 According to Shorto, the biggest consequence of this was that “in New Amsterdam, nearly everyone - rich or poor, the coiffed and the scabby – was part of the same club.”117 This was similar to Gordon Wood’s argument (for the American colonies) and Schuyler van Rensselaer’s that there were not many social classes and that everyone was part of the same society.

Stuyvesant kept his eye on New England. Seeing the danger, he tried to stay on good terms with the English. It led to negotiations in Hartford. Stuyvesant eventually gave up Connecticut and New

Haven (areas which were already lost) in exchange for English recognition of the border between the

English and Dutch colony. After Stuyvesant solved this problem and the Dutch-English war was over, he also wanted to solve the problem at the Delaware River. He went to the Swedish colony with an

113 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 312 114 Shorto, The Island 249 115 Ibidem, 268 116 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 193 117 Shorto, The Island 268 64

army and demanded unconditional surrender. He succeeded but the Dutch could not enjoy the victory for a very long time. The English had their eye on the Dutch colony (which the English king Charles II gave away twice even before the English conquered it. First he gave it away to the governor of

Connecticut and later to the brother of the king – James, Duke of York). The English sent Richard Nicolls with an army to New Amsterdam with generous terms of surrender.

Packaged into it – and extended later by the New York City Charter - was a guarantee of rights

unparalleled in any English colony. ‘The Dutch here shall enjoy the liberty of their Consciences,’ it read.

People would be free to come and go as they liked. Trade would be unrestricted: by all means, ‘Dutch

vessels may freely come hither.’ Most remarkable, the political leaders of the colony would ‘continue as

now they are, ‘provided they swore an oath of allegiance to the king, and in future ‘the Towne of

Manhatans, shall choose Deputyes, and those Deputyes, shall have free Voyces in all Publique affaires.’

Prefiguring the Bill of Rights, it even stipulated that ‘the Townesmen of the Manhatons shall not have

any Souldier quartered upon them.’118

Stuyvesant wanted to fight but he stood alone. It is another example of the different goals and agenda that Stuyvesant and the population had. Where Washington Irving conded the colonists for not supporting Stuyvesant in his fight, Shorto agrees with the colonists. The conquest of New Netherland ignited the “second Anglo-Dutch War” and during peace negotiations the countries decided that everyone could keep their conquests instead of switching them back. The Dutch would quickly regain the colony after the next “Anglo-Dutch War” but after those peace negotiations the Dutch gave back the colony to England. The colony was important for the English. The English King wrote in a letter to sister: "You will have heard of our taking of New Amsterdam, which lies just by New England [...] ‘Tis a place of great importance to trade, and a very good town.” The Dutch had dealt with the wilderness of the island in an amazing way and the king noted “but we have got the better of it, and ‘tis now called

New York.”119 Schuyler van Rensselaer also mentioned that the English saw the importance of New

Netherland. “They [the Dutch] had ‘intruded’, said a paper called the Case of the Corporation for New

118 Shorto, The Island 305 119 Shorto, The Island 307

65

England and written some thirty years later, upon the rights of King James in ‘the very best part of all that large northern empire.’”120

In Shorto’s book one clearly sees the development of New Netherland and especially New

Amsterdam. At the beginning, he sees an image of New Netherland that is similar to the image that was developed after the book by Washington Irving. “In fact, the view that American history has of the

Dutch colony centered around Manhattan fits it fairly well to this point: a colorful collection of losers and scalawags, in consequential and meandering, waiting around for the winds of fate to blow them off the map.”121 Shorto notes that in the late 1640s the city started to change. “Where American history has always portrayed Manhattan succeeding as a commercial center only after the English takeover, in fact it was in the late 1640s that the city of New Amsterdam began its rise to become the hub of

North American shipping.”122 Shorto considers the point when the WIC gave up its trade monopoly as the major changing point. Shorto also refers to the point that Jacobs considers as the major change123:

“One might say that this is the point in history [when New Amsterdam became a city] when Manhattan became Manhattan. With a rudimentary representative government in place, the island rapidly came into its own. Stuyvesant and the West India Company still officially ran the place, but, whether they were Dutch, English, or any of the other nationalities represented in the colony, the businessmen […] increasingly got their way.”124

More than Jacobs, Shorto focuses on the politics and political figures. Shorto focuses more on people behind the structures rather than the structures themselves. Between the books of Shorto and

Jacobs there are multiple differences in approaches and focuses. For instance, the chapters in Shorto are chronological, while the chapters in Jacobs are thematic. The focus of the books is also different.

Shorto focuses on the story of the people, whereas Jacobs chooses to concentrate more on structures of society and the colony. Also, they see the influence of the Dutch colony in different ways. Shorto

120 Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 49 121 Shorto, The Island 86 122 Ibidem, 195 123 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 87-99 124 Shorto, The Island 265 66

writes mostly about the political influence of people such as Adriaen van der Donck. Jacobs does not write about the Dutch influence on modern day America until the epilogue, while Shorto already starts with it in his main argument. Another topic on which Jacobs and Shorto disagrees is religion. Jacobs sees the religious situation of New Netherland not as unique as Shorto does. Jacobs also deals with the topic of slavery, which Shorto hardly discusses.

Besides scholarly books, there were also other recent depictions of the history of New

Netherland and New Amsterdam. One of these was an exhibition, The Birth of New York New

Amsterdam 1624-1664, which was held by the New York Historical Society between October and

December 1982 and by the Amsterdams Historisch Museum between February and March 1983.

Together with the exhibition a catalogue was published to which Ernst van den Boogaart, Boudewijn

Bakker, Eric Nooter and Roelof van Gelder contributed articles. The catalogue also contained introductions by the Mayor of Amsterdam Wim Polak, and the Mayor of New York Edward I. Koch.

In the introductions, Polak and Koch talk about the relationship between Amsterdam and New

York. Edward I. Koch starts his introduction with an event in 1977, when the Administrative Code of the City of New York changed the date in the official city seal from 1664 (the year when the British conquered New Amsterdam and changed the name to New York) to 1625 (the time when the Dutch settlers established New Amsterdam). He argues that the Dutch history of New York should not be forgotten and that the influence of Amsterdam can be still seen in New York. He writes: “The people and government of the Netherlands have been famous not only in the world of commerce but even more significantly in the realm of humanitarianism. The Netherlanders have always been in the forefront in matters relating to religious tolerance, civil rights, freedom of speech and inquiry and last but not least, courage – courage nurtured by their devotion to the principle of humanity and care for their fellow human beings.”125 Koch can see this tradition in New York too: it is “this tradition lasting more than three centuries that has made it possible for the port of New York to evolve as our nation’s

125 Koch, ‘Foreword by Mayor Koch of New York’ 4

67 greatest international center for commerce, trade and industry.”126 Wim Polak writes something similar in his foreword: “But New Amsterdam contributed more to New York than these mementoes

[names of the boroughs, old family names, streets, etc]. Some of the characteristics of the mother city

[Amsterdam] were imprinted on the daughter [New Amsterdam/New York], characteristics that had a great influence on the development of both cities. Like the Amsterdam of those days, and unlike most

English and French settlements in America, New Amsterdam was a multinational and multiracial society. […] As in Amsterdam itself, the values of the businessman tend-ed to outweigh the religious and nationalistic factors that played such an important role in other new World colonies.”127 Polak and

Koch write very positive introductions. They are looking for elements that connect the two cities (New

York and New Amsterdam) and are not interested in the “dark side” of this history. It is in their interest to find common ground in tolerance and multiculturalism and not to attack Kieft or Stuyvesant and their policies.

The first article by Ernst van den Boogaart begins with describing the struggles of the starting colony. The colony was not a WIC priority because the company had more interest in Brazil and the slave trade. The WIC tried to populate the new colony by giving ‘patroonships’ to large shareholders.

A patroonship is “a sizeable piece of land with certain administrative and judicial rights over it.”128 The patroonships also got a share in the fur trade, which was the main source of income in New Netherland.

These patroonships were given if the shareholders sent 50 settlers to the colony. The most famous was Rensselaerswyck, which is still a small village next to Albany, New York. The last thing van den

Boogaart says about the colony itself is that it was never a contiguous European colony. Only two settlements in New Netherland could be considered towns: Beverwijck (modern day Albany, New York)

126 Ibidem, 4 127 Wim Polak, ‘Foreword by Mayor Polak of Amsterdam’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982) 5 128 Ernst van den Boogaart, ‘The Netherlands and New Netherland 1624-1664’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982) 10 68

with 120 houses and New Amsterdam with 350 houses. Most of the land between these two towns was Indian Territory.129

Van den Boogaart also talks about the population of New Netherland. Most of the population came from the Dutch Republic and New England. There were also minorities mainly from other Dutch colonies and Sweden. The Dutch population of New Netherland never reached more than 20 percent of the total population. Like most of the European colonies all over the world, most of the population were young bachelors, a few couples with children and elderly people. This meant that natural growth was possible. There is little known about the class structure of the society. There were people with money and status; many WIC officials invested in land and leased the land to third parties.

Nevertheless, most of the immigrants were ‘honest poor’ or they were farmers and at least half of the population traveled to North America financially supported by others. In contrast to England, France and Sweden, the Dutch did not engage in forced migration. Also, religion was not the prime reason to immigrate to New Netherland. As van den Boogaart writes about the New Netherland society: “As a group, the settlers probably were not seriously at odds with the communities they had left, nor did they feel as if they were being expelled. More than likely, they either expected to find a similar society in the new land or intended to set one up themselves. Unlike the Puritans in New England, few of them were motived by high ideals of godly living or personal salvation.”130 While Van den Boogaart agrees with Jacobs and does not write about politics but about society, unlike Wood and Van Rensselaer he refers to status differences and the absence of equality in the colony.

In his second article, Van den Boogaart focuses more on New Amsterdam. Firstly, he talks about the elite of New Amsterdam. This was a group of 30/40 citizens with the largest fortune who traded with Europe. Every year about 5 or 7 ships went to the Dutch Republic. Thanks to this, New

Amsterdam became the biggest harbor on the Northeast coast of the New World after Boston.

However, van den Boogaart writes: “New Amsterdam may have been the most city like settlement in

129 Van den Boogaart, ‘The Netherlands and New Netherland’ 9-13 130 Ibidem, 15

69

New Netherland, yet a goodly number of its inhabitants were still involved in farming in one way or another. In the colony it was a town, but in Holland it would have been a village. […] The colonist had their hands full providing themselves with the necessities of life.”131 In this article, Van den Boogaart also focuses on the black population of New Amsterdam. The author says that 15 to 20 percent of the population was black and they did most of the unskilled work in the colony. The first 100 slaves were brought by and were property of the WIC. The 250 slaves who came between 1639 and 1664 were sold to private owners. The status of blacks was not similar to the status of the rest of the population.

We need have no illusions as to their status. They were chattels, and their children were chattels. The

Company [WIC] did free a few dozen of its slaves in the period 1643-1664, but only after a minimum of

18 years’ bondage and on terms that were anything but generous. […] They may have been

emancipated, but that did not make them equal to free citizens. Clearly, the Company policy regarding

emancipation was not guided by moral objections to slavery. Nor is there any reason to believe that

private slave owners felt any differently. The occasional freeing of a slave, like the incidental acceptance

of blacks as members of the church, was clearly meant to adapt blacks to the white mans’ way of life.132

On the other hand, there was some intermingling in both the social and sexual domains. There was a limited acceptance, shown by for example church members, of racially mixed marriages. There are even some examples of white workers who were working for freedmen. Nevertheless, eventually they were never equal. Van den Boogaart concludes that there was always ‘societal racism’. He describes it as: “The majority of them lived and died as slaves, and the few who were freed were doomed to stay in the margin of a white society.”133 This is all very similar to the term “half freedom” that is used by

Jacobs in his book.134 The topics in his second article are very similar to the first. He does not discuss politics, but the structure of society.

131 Ernst van den Boogaart, ‘New Amsterdam’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982) 19 132 Van den Boogaart, ‘New Amsterdam’ 20 133 Van den Boogaart, ‘New Amsterdam’ 20 134 Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland 203 70

The last two articles are written by Eric Nooter and Roelof van Gelder. Nooter writes about archaeological research which was done and the things found in New Netherland. Van Gelder writes about the opinion of the Dutch on New Netherland. The article by Nooter shows that the urban archaeology of New Netherland started in 1916 when a part of the ship ‘Tyger’ was found in Lower

Manhattan. However, it was not until after the Second World War when urban archaeology was properly done. It was not until 1968 when archaeologists started looking for the rest of the ‘Tyger’.

Nooter gives one of the reasons of this late start: “Until fairly recently, American archaeologist and historians thought that these finds were random survivals of a wholesale destruction. They could not bring themselves to believe that a metropolis like New York could possibly contain any material of real archaeological value.”135 The Stadt Huys Project in 1979 was the first big urban archaeological project.

This involved a search for the Old Dutch town hall at the corner of Pearl Street and Coenties Alley. The project turned out to be a huge success: more than four tons of archaeological material was found.136

The article of Nooter shows that there was a very limited interest in New Netherland, even after the

Holland Mania of the beginning of the 20th century. Many people thought that nothing could be found underneath New York; hardly anyone bothered to check for a long time.

Roelof van Gelder wrote in his article that the citizens of the Dutch Republic were well informed about the activities of the country overseas. The first map of New Netherland was already published in 1613/1614, which was only four years after Hudson discovered it. When the WIC gained control of the new colony more information became available to people in the Dutch Republic. In 1625,

Johannes de Laet published his book De Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschryvinghe van West-Indiën (The New

World, or Description of the West Indies), which was the first Dutch description of New Netherland.

Johannes de Laet was a WIC governor and this is why he was very positive about the new colony.137

However, the population of the Dutch Republic did not only receive positive propaganda. There were

135 Eric Nooter, ‘The Archaeology of Dutch New York’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982) 23 136 Nooter, ‘The Archaeology’ 22-23 137 Roelof van Gelder, ‘’A richly blessed land where milk and honey flow’: New Netherland seen by Dutch eyes’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982) 26-28 71

also a few critical pamphlets against the WIC policy and the colony. One example was an anonymous pamphlet that was published two years after the Kieft War in 1649. It was called Breeden-Raedt aende

Vereenichtde Nederlandsche Provintien (Broad Council to the United Dutch Provinces), an indictment against the corruption, blasphemy, drunkenness of the government of New Netherland, the Indian

Wars and against both Kieft and Stuyvesant. The effects of these pamphlets were limited but the WIC was annoyed by them. At the time, the WIC lost its colonies in Brazil and it worried about these negative publications. That is one of the reasons why in the years between 1655 and 1662 there was a boom of publications about New Netherland. One of the most famous and influential was the book of Adriaen van der Donck, which was already discussed earlier.138

Not all the topics of the publications and pamphlets were about the economy. In 1662, Pieter

Corneliszoon Plockhoy published his Kort en Klaer Ontwerp (Short and Clear Plan). It was a utopian plan for a colony at the Delaware River: a colony without slavery and an imposed, state religion, with equality for all. Eventually, he sailed with 41 colonists to the New World but before he could start his settlement, the colony was taken over by the English.139 Unlike Nooter, Van Gelder shows that there was interest in the colony.

One can clearly see the difference between the historical studies and the exhibition catalogue.

In the catalogue, the writers focus more on the population at large. They not really judge the governors or individuals. The question ‘why’ is hardly ever asked and answered. The sources are different in each article and the point of view of each writer is different. The books, on the other hand, focus on broad and more political subjects and the story of the development of the colony.

In the 21st century, the historiography of New Netherland has changed. The New Netherland

Institute and the 400th anniversary of Hudson’s journey caused an increase in both public attention and scholarly work on the subject. However, with the increased attention the topics and methods have also changed. On the one hand, the historiography is now more professional, but on the other hand,

138 Van Gelder, ‘New Netherlands seen by Dutch eyes’ 29-31 139 Van Gelder, ‘New Netherlands seen by Dutch eyes’ 32

72 the topics have become more political. The story of New Netherland and its influence keeps on changing, together with the political perception of New Netherland history. The modern day debates about multiculturalism and racism have had an impact on New Netherland historiography, resulting among others in the glorification of New Netherland as a site (and model) of tolerance and religious freedom.

73 Conclusion

As could be expected, the books about the Dutch colony of New Netherland have changed over the years. In the beginning, the authors wrote with a specific, very practical purpose in mind, often non-historical in nature. Adriaen van der Donck published his Description of New Netherland to lure settlers to the colony. Even though Washington Irving wrote a history of New York, his book was meant to entertain readers. At the end of the 19th century historians took over. The writers were still amateur historians at best but the purpose of their books was to write about what truly happened.

The authors usually had other, non-historical aims as well. Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer produced a history of the Dutch colony that could serve as a New York substitute for the Massachusetts Puritan narrative, delineating the colony’s relevance for the history of the United States. Such works created a sense of pride among New Yorkers. By the time of the 400th anniversary of Hudson’s travel, professional academics had taken over, stimulated by the archival work of their colleagues. However, non-academic aims remained part of the historiography. Even though most current day writers are all professionals and academics, political preferences intrude upon the descriptions of their topic. Due to the current debates going on in society and the historical profession about multiculturalism and traditions of racism and prejudices, this is perhaps not very surprising. Elements of pride and shame are part of the historiography. Shorto’s depiction of New Netherland as a role model for, and major

“contributor” to, tolerance and democracy appeals to the pride and chauvinism of Dutch people and

New Yorkers. These types of depictions also make for more interesting readings, appealing to a large audience.

Throughout the years, not only the writers have changed but also the content of their depictions. The people who were seen as the heroes in the 19th century are no longer the heroes in the 21st century. Washington Irving sees Peter Stuyvesant as a hero, portraying him as the captain who is the last person leaving the sinking ship. In the 20th century, Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer saw in

Captain David Pietersz. de Vries a hero, who risks his life for others. Nowadays, the New Netherland

74 Institute and Russell Shorto push Adriaen van der Donck as the unsung hero of the Dutch colony, and

Dutch American history. Not only the heroes of the story have changed (figures such as Stuyvesant), but also the view of the political structure and importance of the colony. In the beginning, authors saw power in the Dutch colony in the hands of a few fat Dutchman who drank and smoked all day; the colony was not a great success, financially or otherwise. Over the years this perspective changed, with various explanations about the moments that changed the history of the Dutch colony and the causes of its “success.” Jaap Jacobs and Russell Shorto see a certain development and dramatic (relatively speaking) change in the colony. Although they both put the turning point at a different moment in the history (Jacobs at the moment when New Amsterdam became a city and Shorto when the WIC gave up its trade monopoly), they see New Netherland as an important colony with an interesting and well developed political structure. Shorto and Jacobs implicitly and explicitly emphasized the importance of the colony.

Eduard Bok’s early references to Dutch contributions to America’s freedom of education, freedom of religious worship, freedom of the press and democratic suffrage and the negative and positive depictions of Peter Stuyvesant remain relevant for the current day professional debate about

New Netherland history. The modern day interest in New Netherland is too limited to the academic field to speak of a new Holland Mania. Many people, particularly in the United States, still associate

New Netherland with the fictional story of Washington Irving. However, since 1970’s when the New

Netherland Institute started to translate the Dutch sources of the colony into English, more and more professional historians have tried to repair the broken image of New Netherland. Currently, historiographical consensus appears to indicate that New Netherland and New Amsterdam were much more important than Washington Irving and Mariana Schuyler van Rensselaer or even Adriaen van der

Donck could imagine, politically and otherwise.

75 Bibliography

Books

Black, Michael L. and Black Nancy B. ed. Washington Irving, A History of New York (Boston 1984)

Dinnerstein, Lois. Opulence and Ocular Delight, Splendor and Squalor: Critical Writings in Art and Architecture by Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer (Ann Arbor 1979)

Donck, Adriaen van der. A Description of the New Netherlands, (Thomas O’Donnell (trans.)) (Syracuse 1968)

Donck, Adriaen van der. A Description of the New Netherlands, (J. Johnson (trans.)) (Syracuse 1968)

Donck, Adriaen van der. Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States General of the United Netherlands (1649)

Fabend, Firth Haring. New Netherland in a Nutshell A concise history of the Dutch Colony in North America (Albany 2012)

Jacobs, Jaap. The Colony of New Netherland A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca 2009)

Jameson, J.F. (ed.). Narratives of New Netherland 1609-1664 (New York 1909)

Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia (1787)

Kinnard, Cynthia Doering. The Life and Works of Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer, American Art Critic (Ann Arbor 1977)

Koeningsberg, Lisa M. Professionalizing domesticity: A tradition of American women writers on architecture, 1848-1913 (Ann Arbor 1987)

Laer, A.J.F. van (trans. and ed.). Council Minutes, 1638-1649 (New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vol 4)

Laer, A.J.F. van (trans. and ed.). Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts, Being the Letters of Kiliaen van Rensselear 1630-1643, and Other Documents Relating to the Colony of Rensselaerswyck (Albany 1908)

Laer, A.J F. van (trans. And ed.). Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624-1626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library (San Marino 1924)

O’Callaghan E. B. and Fernow B. (trans. and ed.). Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany 1853-1883)

Pietersz. De Vries, David. Short Historical and Journal Notes of Serval Voyages made in the Four Parts of the World (nb)

Plantagenet, Beauchamp. A description of the province of New Albion (London 1648)

Schuyler, van Rensselaer Mariana. History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century Vol 1. New Amsterdam (New York 1909)

76 Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (New York 2004)

Stanley, T. Williams. The Life of Washington Irving Vol 1 (New York 1935)

Stott, Annette. Holland Mania the Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture (New York 1998)

Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York 1991)

Articles

Bloch, J.M., ‘O’Donnell, ed. “A Description of the New Netherlands”(Book Review)’, New York History, 52.3 (July 1, 1969)

Bok, Edward. ‘The Mother of America’ in: The Ladies’ Home Journal, no. 11 (Oct 1903)

Boogaart, Ernst van den. ‘The Netherlands and New Netherland 1624-1664’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982)

Boogaart, Ernst van den. ‘New Amsterdam’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982)

Douma, Michael. ‘Tulip Time and the Invention of a New Dutch American Ethnic Identity’ in: American Studies Vol. 53 No. 1 (2014)

Gehring, Charles T. (trans. And ed.). ‘Fort Orange Court minutes, 1652-1660’ in: New Netherland Documents Series, vol 16 part 2 (Syracuse 1990)

Gelder, Roelof van. ‘’A richly blessed land where milk and honey flow’: New Netherland seen by Dutch eyes’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982)

Hakim, Danny. ‘His Specialty? Making Old New York Talk in Dutch’ in: New York Times New York Region (December 27th 2009)

Jong, Joop de. ‘The Dutch Golden Age and Globalization: History and Heritage, Legacies and Contestations’ in: Macalester International (vol 27, 2011)

Koch, Edward I. ‘Foreword by Mayor Koch of New York’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982)

Lange, Alexandra. ‘Founding Mother’ in: Places Journal (February 2013)

Mak, Geert. ‘Henry Hudson in Amsterdam’ in: Geert Mak and Russell Shorto, 1609 De vergeten geschiedenis van Hudson, Amsterdam en New York (Amsterdam 2009)

Major, Judith K. ‘Biography of Mariana Van Rensselaer’ in: The Cultural Landscape Foundation (www.tclf.org/pioneer/mariana-van-rensseaer/biography-mariana-van-rensselaer) (15 November 2008)

McGann, Jerome. ‘Washington Irving, A History of New York, and American History’ in: Early American Literature (vol 47, no 2, 2012)

77 New Netherland Institute. Adriaen van der Donck (1620-1655) on: http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/dutch_americans/adriaen- van-der-donck/ (seen 16-4-2015)

New Netherland Institute. About the New Netherland Institute (www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/about-nni/) seen 30 March 2015

New Netherland Institute. Who’s Who (www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/about-nni-who-s-who/) seen 30 March 2015

New York State Library. New Netherland Research Center, (www.nysl.nysed.gov/newnetherland/nnp.htm) seen 30 March 2015

Nooter, Eric. ‘The Archaeology of Dutch New York’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982)

Polak, Wim. ‘Foreword by Mayor Polak of Amsterdam’ in: Roelof van Gelder ed., The Birth of New York New Amsterdam 1624-1664 (Amsterdam 1982)

Rensselaer, Mariana Griswold van. ‘Client and Architect’ in: Places Journal (February 2013)

Reiss, A.J. “Public Prosecutors and Criminal Prosecution in the United States of America”, Juridical Review (April 1975)

Roberts, Sam. ‘350 Years Ago, New Amsterdam Became New York. Don’t Expect a Party…’ in: New York Times (August 26, 2014)

Scraba Jeffrey. ‘Quixotic History and Cultural Memory: Knickerbocker’s History of New York’ in: Early American Studies: A Interdisciplinary Journal (vol 7, no 2, 2009)

Shorto, Russell. ‘De toevallige nalatenschap van Henry Hudson’ in: Geert Mak and Russell Shorto, 1609 De vergeten geschiedenis van Hudson, Amsterdam en New York (Amsterdam 2009)

Sulzberger, A.G. “400 years later, and still proud of New Amsterdam” in: New York Times (13 September 2009) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/nyregion/14dutch.html?_r=0 (seen 3-2-2015)

Tolles, Thayer. ‘Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The New Metropolitan Museum of Art’ in: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (v. 66, no 4, 2009)

Wilson, Ann. ‘review of Peter Novicks That Noble Dream: The “objectivity Question” and the American Historical profession’ in: Ex Post Facto (Vol. 11 2002)

Rest

The Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions (1640) quoted in: Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York 201 http://www.russellshorto.com/about (seen 1-2-2015) https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=30915254 (seen 19-2-2015) https://www.speakersacademy.com/nl/spreker/jaap-jacobs/ (seen 19-2-2015)

78 http://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/archives/report-of- the-aha-committee-on-the-status-of-women/appendix-e-proportion-of-women-to-men-receiving- phd-and-ma-degrees-between-1900-and-1970 (seen 23-5-2015) http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history//legal-history-new-york/legal-history-eras-03/history-era-03- de-vries.html (seen 25-5-2015) http://www.mokeham.com/dutchthemag/feature-zwaanendael/ (seen 25-5-2015) http://archinect.com/news/article/68593791/mariana-van-rensselaer-founding-mother-of- architecture-criticism (seen 25-5-2015)

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